NOTE: This is a pre-production transcript and may not match the final show precisely.
Hello! And welcome to the next episode of How Good It Is, the show that takes a closer look at songs from the rock and roll era, and we check out some of the stories behind those songs, and the artists who made them famous.
My name is Claude Call, and Iâm still a little sick, here.
Does it make me sound sexyâier?
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I have not talked about Podcast Republic in a bit, and itâs high time I did, because it is SO packed with features that you just keep on finding them. Did you know that you can use Podcast Republic to play shows at a specific time? Yes! You can use it as an alarm clock! Or, you can use the sleep timer function so that when this show puts you to sleep, itâll shut itself off. And something I discovered recently is that the Car Mode is gesture-operated. I mean, the display turns into big, easy-to-find buttons, but you can customize it so that shaking your device in a specific way will control playback without even opening your phone. How about that! Podcast Republic is, honest-to-goodness the only podcatcher you need. Iâve been using it for close to five years now, long before I had a show for them to feature. I donât make a dime off of saying this, thatâs how good it is, you should excuse the expression. Go find it in the Google Play store, or you can follow the link at my website.
[MR BLUES]
Iâve got an interesting bit of trivia for ye this week.
Moby Grapeâs self-titled debut album from 1967, with its various elements of pop, psychedelia, garage-band sound and maybe even a little bit of country, is nowadays considered one of the best rock albums of the 1960s. And to be sure, many artists have covered various tracks from the album. But Moby Grapeâs poor record sales were largely blamed on a specific circumstance surrounding the release of the albumâs singles, specifically the timing. What was so unusual about the timing?
Iâll have that answer, and the story behind it, near the end of the show.
Ohâbefore I get started, I should note that this episode was a request came to me from Jeremiah Coughlan by way of Instagram. Jeremiah is a comedian from the West Coast who has a podcast of his own along with fellow comic Jake Silberman, called Brine Time, a show that airs in Portland Oregon and is devoted to the Portland Pickles baseball team. And if that doesnât sound like a lot, then you donât know anything about baseball below the Major League level. âCause let me tell you, I live 15 minutes from Camden Yards, but I travel more than twice that amount of time to see the Aberdeen Ironbirds, because itâs just so much fun watching the younger players turn into pros. Brine Time is between seasons just now, but you can find the show if you do a search for Brine Time Podcast in the Google Machine, or just go get a link from my website.
I have a theory about power ballads.
Rock bands like to do power ballads, and I think itâs for a number of reasons. I think they like to broaden their appeal, and certainly their sales numbers, itâs an opportunity to perhaps convey something they consider a little bit profound. Maybe it gives the lead singer a chance to lay back a little bit vocally. And it certainly provides them with the lighters or cellphones in the air moment for the crowd to show tribute. And every rock band has at least one in the repertoire. Aerosmith has âDonât Want to Miss a Thing,â for Nazareth itâs âLove Hurtsâ, Poison gave us âEvery Rose Has its Thornâ, and of course Guns ânâ Roses provided âNovember Rainâ.
But once in awhileâonce in awhileâthe power ballad has an unfortunate effect on some bands. The song tends to take on greater importance than may have been originally ascribed to it, and suddenly an artist, or a band, finds themselves defined by it, which can lead to all kinds of identity problems. Michael Bolton was a hard rocker until his cover of âDock of the Bayâ became a huge adult contemporary hit.
[MORE THAN WORDS]
Chris DeBurgh was re-defined when âLady in Redâ was a monster hit and became a staple of mobile DJs forever. And do you remember this tune?…
âŠâMore Than Wordsâ was such a huge departure from Extremeâs usual sound that when it started getting airplay, radio stations wouldnât even back-announce it, because they knew theyâd get blamed when someone bought the album expecting more of the same, and never mind that the albumâs title is Pornograffiti. Itâs almost like the time I was working in a record store and a sweet little old lady came in asking for an album by the guitar god Joe Satriani. She was buying it for herself, not her grandson. Now, in that case she turned out to be Joeâs mother, and if youâre listening, Joe, Shame on You for making your own mother buy your album. But that one was a happy ending, and in the case of Extreme it often wasnât.
And I think the same kind of thing happened with Foreigner. Their fifth album, Agent Provocateur, wasâin my opinionâsome really solid work although it took a little bit of a beating in the press. It wasnât their biggest-selling album, but it was kind of ambitious, with some extra synth, and input from the Thompson Twins and, of course, Jennifer Holliday, but weâll get to that in a minute.
As I said, it wasnât a huge sellerâbigger than Head Games but not as big as 4âbut it also yielded their only Number One hit in multiple nations. And thatâs the song weâre going to talk about a little bit today.
Guitarist Mick Jones wrote the song, he says, in the middle of the night. He explained to the website Ultimate Classic Rock that heâd been through a divorce, and heâd met someone else who heâd ultimately marry. And the band was feeling some of the pressure that comes with being in a band thatâs expected to sell millions of albums. And around that same time, he and lead singer Lou Gramm were getting into what he called a âcold war situation.â Heâd just returned to England from New York and was just kind of getting back in touch with himself, and so it was a very emotional period for him. So one night heâs up at 3 AM, and he sat down at the keyboard and wrote a little bit of what eventually became âI Want to Know What Love Is.â He says he knew he had something right away, so he woke up his sleeping fiancĂ©e so he could play it for her. At that point he had a few chords of the intro and the title. And, as he told Ultimate Classic Rock, when he told her the prospective title, she didnât take it well. She asked him, âWhat you do mean, you want to know what love is? Weâre about to get married!â But they did get married, so I suppose he was able to smooth that one over.
Now, while the rest of the band had a few suggestions here and there, this was largely Mick Jonesâ song, which was a departure from their usual pattern, which had Jones and Gramm as co-composers on most of their songs. And the story goes that Lou Gramm did, indeed, push back on âI Want to Know What Love Isâ at first, thinking that it could move the band as a whole into an adult contemporary sound and away from their rock roots. But Jones rationalized it, saying in an interview with Billboard Magazine that all of their albums had a couple of ballads on them. So while Gramm may have aired his opinion at the time, and given the earlier tension in the band, people started pointing to that as the reason for all the differences that led to Gramm leaving, and rejoining, the band later on. And sure enough, Gramm did point to that as being one of the reasons he wanted to leave. But in the moment, he said his piece and they all moved forward.
[FOREIGNER]
In addition to the basic band, Foreigner also brought in the Thompson Twins to assist with some of the synth work and backup singing, and Tom Bailey in particular gets credited on the album for working on this track. And while that buzzy synthesizer does help with the sound, it still needed something else.
Even as he was working on the song with the other band members, Jones began to envision the song as something bigger, trying to find a way to enhance it spiritually. He says he even considered approaching Aretha Franklin to get her to work on it.
But according to an interview with Louder Sound Dot Com, Jones said he was having lunch with a guy who ran a gospel music label. He sent over a bunch of albums, and one was by the New Jersey Mass Choir. When he heard them, he finally had the finished version in his head. So he drove out to New Jerseyâitâs not 100% clear where they rehearse, but I think itâs in Newarkâand watched them practice, and they were a fresh enough group that theyâd never worked on a mainstream album before.
But that wasnât quite enough to get the project completed. They needed one more dose of intervention from God. About thirty choir members piled into the Right Track Studio in New York City, and they did a few takes but it still wasnât quite working out, Jones says, In that same interview, he explained that the choir got into a circle, held hands and recited the Lordâs Prayer, and that seemed to do the trick, because, he says, they managed to nail it on the very next take. And by the way, one of the members of that choir was Jennifer Holliday, who helped with the vocal arrangements. Jones said that he was in tears afterward, and it was a very emotional moment for him, in part because his parents were in the studio as well.
Jones also said that shortly after they finished the song, he invited Atlantic Records president Ahmet Ertegun to the studio and told him, âLook, I just want to play you one song and hear what you think.â Ertegun reacted much the same way, and Jones was floored by this reaction. After all, this is the guy who discovered Ray Charles and Aretha Frankli
And sure enough, the song hit all the right places. It was released in time for Christmas of 1984, just a couple of weeks ahead of the album, and early in January 1985 it knocked âDo They Know itâs Christmasâ off the top of the UK Singles chart, and held that spot for three weeks. In the US, it took a little longer to reach the top, but in February it finally replaced Madonnaâs âLike a Virginâ in the top slot. And that makes âI Want to Know What Love Isâ their ONLY Number One hit in either nation. It was also Number One in Australia, Canada, Ireland, New Zealand, and most of Scandinavia. And it was the Number Four song for the YEAR 1985 in the US, plus Number Three in Canada for the year.
In addition to the album version, which is 5 minutes and four seconds there and on the single, thereâs also a 12-inch single with a longer intro and an extended fadeout, going to 6:23.
As far as cover versions go, there are a few notable ones. The first came fromâgo figureâthe New Jersey Mass Choir, which released a similar-sounding record in the spring of 1985, and while it didnât chart on the Hot 100, it did see some action on the R&B chart.
[TINA ARENA]
Australian performer Tina Arena recorded a cover in 1998 that went Top 40 in Australia and Top 50 across Europe. This version was produced by Mick Jones, who wrote an extended bridge for the song between the second and third choruses. And Iâm not sure whoâs singing backup, but thereâs a strong resemblance to Lou Gramm there, enough that at first I thought heâd been sampledâŠ
[WYNONNA]
In 2004 country singer Wynonna Judd released her cover of the song, featuring Jeff Beck playing a pretty bluesy electric guitar and Paul Franklin playing a subtle steel guitar. Itâs a little overproduced by Narada Michael Walden, because thatâs his thing, but I kind of like itâŠ
This one went to Number 14 on the Billboard Adult Contemporary Chart and made it to Number 15 in Sweden. OK. You can find that one on her album, What the World Needs Now Is Love.
OK, brace yourself a little for this one.
[MARIAH CAREY]
While Narada Michael Walden has worked with Mariah Carey, he was not present on this 2009 version of the song, which instead was produced by Carey, along with Tricky Stewart and Big Jim Wright. Now, except for the tempo, Carey didnât really change it much, and even Mick Jones was happy with the result. The single didnât see a ton of action, which had people worried about the rest of the album, Memoirs of an Imperfect Angel, but the album as a whole did quite well.
[OMAHA]
And now itâs time to answer todayâs trivia question.
Back on Page Two I asked you about Moby Grape, and the fact that the timing of the single releases in 1967 may have had something to do with the bandâs poor reception among both radio and retailers. Itâs really as simple as it being a case of âtoo much, too soon.â You see, Columbia Records made the peculiar decision to release all five singles from the album on the SAME day. It was basically a weird marketing stunt, but the net result was that Moby Grape became just one more counterculture band getting huge amounts of promotion, and while it got good reviews and eventually decent sales, the early perception is that they were way over-hyped, and only one of the singles managed to reach the charts, that one being this track, titled âOmaha.â
Incidentally, Moby Grape got its name from the punchline of the joke âWhatâs big and purple and lives in the ocean?â
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Next time around, weâre going to find out How Good It Is when we take a listener-suggested look at another set of songs you may not have known were covers.
Thanks for listening, and Iâll talk to you next time.