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 I briefly lost my identity today. Thatâs a little scary.
Remember to check out the website, How Good It Is Dot Com, and the Twitter, and the Instagram, and of course the Facebook page, which can be found over at Facebook dot com, slash, (ow) How Good It Is Pod.
Oh, and do I have a good trivia question for ye today!
There are two songsâonly twoâthat was recorded by The Beatles, Bob Dylan, AND Elvis Presley. Those three didnât have a lot of overlap between any two of them, but there are two songs that all three of them had in common. What song was that?
Iâll have that answer to that question near the end of the show.
This time around weâre looking at songs that were inspired by literary works, and this is another one of those shows that could easily turn into a whole series of programs, much like the shows about cover songs, so naturally Iâm going to concentrate on just a few, and weâll probably revisit this topic every now and again. OK? We good? Letâs go.
[DONâT FEAR THE REAPER]
Letâs start with the obvious thing: âDonât Fear the Reaperâ by Blue Oyster Cult is NOT about suicide but rather about accepting the inevitability of death. But there is a verse that clearly makes a literary reference, specifically about Shakespeareâs Romeo and Juliet. Now, in the play, Romeo swallows poison because he thinks Juliet is dead. Juliet sees his body and responds by stabbing herself with his dagger. This is what brought people to the conclusion that the song is about suicide, but songwriter Buck Dharma has said that itâs about two people who had faith that they would be together after they died.
[VIDEO KILLED THE RADIO STAR]
The Bugglesâ song âVideo Killed the Radio Starâ is known these days as the answer to the trivia question âWhat was the first song played on MTV?â but, while the song is generally about the state of the radio industry, comparing the 1960s to the late 1970s, but according to co-writer Trevor Horn, the original inspiration for this song was a science fiction story from 1960. The story is called âThe Sound Sweep,â and it was written by British author J. G. Ballard for Science Fantasy magazineâs February 1960 issue. In the story, a mute boy is vacuuming up stray sounds in a world without music. Music has been rendered obsolete because of advances in a technology called âultrasound music.â The boy meets and befriends a destitute opera singer who was living in an abandoned recording studio. I wonât spoil the ending for you, but I have found a link to the story on the web and you can read it for yourself. And, for what itâs worth, the song was out for over a year when the video began appearing on MTV. By that time Trevor Horn was playing with the band Yes, and it took him awhile to figure out why young kids were recognizing him.
[THE INNER LIGHT clip]
âThe Inner Lightâ was the last of the Beatles songs that George wrote which had a heavy Indian influence, and itâs his first song to appear on a single, as the B side to âLady Madonna.â
George had originally recorded this during sessions for the Wonderwall soundtrack, and as a result none of the musicians on the track are Beatles. Instead, theyâre all Indian session musicians hired for the album by EMI studios in Bombayâwhich is now called Mumbai. After that recording George brought the tapes back to London, where he laid down the vocal track, and got Paul and John to sing some backup harmonies. According to Georgeâs autobiography I Me Mine, shortly before The Beatles went to India to study Transcendental Meditation with the Maharishi, George met with a Sanskrit scholar from Cambridge University named Juan Mascaro, who followed up that meeting with a copy of his book, titled Lamps of Fire. Lamps of Fire was an anthology of religious writings, and Mascaro specifically suggested that a poem on a certain page would make for a good song. This poem comes from the Tao Te Ching, which goes back to the Fourth Century BCE and was written by Laozi, or Lao Tzu. George made a few minor changes to the translation to make the whole thing more inclusive, and to make the song a little bit longer.
And, if youâre a fan of Star Trek, youâll remember that thereâs a Next Generation episode from 1992 called âThe Inner Light.â While the song doesnât appear in the episode, show writer Morgan Gendel has acknowledged that the title is homage to Georgeâs song. He was originally going to name all the Star Trek episodes he wrote after a Beatles song, but this was the only one out of four, whose title didnât change from concept to screen.
[f/o or allow to end]
Ray Bradburyâs books and short stories have inspired a number of different songs, but one story in particular was the inspiration for two songs, and in that respect and one other theyâre related to one another. Bradbury wrote a series of stories that didnât quite have a common thread, so when he collected them into a single volume, he used a tattooed man as the framing device that tied them together. The Illustrated Man was a person with tattoos all over his body, and each tattoo animates itself into a different story.
Now, let me take you over to a little-remembered band by the name of Pearls Before Swine. Pearls Before Swineâs musical style is probably best described as âpsychedelic folkâ, and they were led by a guy named Tom Rapp, who grew up near Cape Canaveral in Florida, where he liked to go and watch the rockets taking off in the 1960s. On the day that Apollo 11 took off for the moon, Rapp was inspired both by the moon shot and by Ray Bradburyâs story that he wrote a song called âRocket ManââŠ
[PBS]
âŠtheir album containing that song, The Use of Ashes, came out the following year. And that song, in turn, inspired Bernie Taupin to write his own âRocket Manâ song. Same title, same overall thrust, but the songâs storyline maybe hews a little closer to Bradburyâs short story, âRocket Man.â You see, in Bradburyâs story, astronauts are kind of a rare bird, so they work when they want and they get a lot of pay for it. One of these Rocket Men tends to work in space for about three months at a time, then comes home to his wife and fourteen year old son, whose name is Doug. But he only stays home for about three days before he gets that itch to go back out into space. Doug also wants to be a Rocket Man, but heâs starting to pick up on the fact that itâs really putting a strain on his parents. The father has tried to quit the job several times but the lure of space is just too much. Finally he decides heâs making his last trip, but before he does he makes Doug promise not to become a Rocket Man. And again, I wonât spoil the ending but Iâll link to a version you can read. Itâs got a few scanning errors but you should be OK. But Elton Johnâs version of the song has a little more of that longing for the spacefaring life, and itâs got what I consider to be one of the better opening lines of a pop song:
[ROCKET MAN Elton]
I donât know why, but that couplet knocks me out. Anyway, Taupin was accused of ripping off David Bowieâs âSpace Oddityâ for this song, but Taupin has always said that he got the idea from Tom Rapp.
[KILLING AN ARAB]
OK, this one has a controversial history attached to it. The Cureâs first single was this one, titled âKilling an Arabâ, and itâs from their album Boys Donât Cry. It met with controversy when it first got airplay on the college radio stations, and in 1986 a student DJ on Princetonâs radio station did a huge racist chat before playing the song. But:
If you actually listen to the song, you realize that first: the whole song is about alienation and the emptiness of life, because second: Robert Smith wrote the song because he was trying to encapsulate a scene from Albert Camusâ book The Stranger, which involves the bookâs narrator killing an Arab on a beach. Ultimately the character is condemned for being honest about the way he feels, and the way he feels is justâŠempty. Thereâs no guilt and no remorse. He canât articulate any better reason for killing the man other than he was overwhelmed by the heat and the bright sunlight of the beach.
But after the big to-do in 1986, The Cure had to change the lyrics for some performances, singing instead âKissing an Arab,â which makes a whole lot of senseâa-hemâor occasionally Robert Smith would have a conversation with people before the show who were opposed to the song being played at all. And sometimes he was able to talk them into understanding the meaning of the song, and be allowed to play it.
When The Cure released their first singles compilation Standing on the Beach and its video companion Staring at the Seaâtwo titles that ALSO come from The Strangerârather than omitting the song from the collections, the band compromised by putting a sticker on the packaging advising against racist use of the song. In addition, Elektra Records requested that radio stations stop playing the song altogether. But of course discussion of the song reared its head again during the Gulf War of the early 1990s and again after 9/11.
OK, I think we need one more to cleanse our palates.
[GO ALL THE WAY]
Eric Carmen was one of the founding members of The Raspberries, and in âGo All The Wayâ heâs clearly trying to talk a girl into having sex with him. This song has a dual inspiration, as the stories go. The first was watching Mick Jagger sing âLetâs Spend the Night Togetherâ on the Ed Sullivan Show. As you might recall from my interview with Christopher McKittrick, when you watch the video of that performance, you can see that Mick Jagger had to change the songâs lyrics to âLetâs spend some time together,â and while heâs complying with the request, heâs also literally rolling his eyes so hard that he can probably see his own brains. Carmen wanted to write a song with a sexually explicit lyric that he couldnât be pinned down for. Around that same time he came across a book called Going All the Way by Dan Wakefield, a book set in the mid-1950s which involves a couple of young Korean War veterans coming back to their hometown and basically trying to have sex with some girlâŠany girl. When Carmen saw that book title, he knew he had the lyrical hook for his song. Going All the Way was turned into a 1997 movie starring Jeremy Davies and Ben Affleck, and it got mixed reviews at best. But the book! The book has always gotten lots of good press, so thereâs that.
And now, itâs time to answer todayâs trivia question. Back on Page Two I asked you to identify the two songs that were recorded by The Beatles, Bob Dylan and Elvis Presley, all three of them.
[THATâS ALL RIGHT Elvis]
Well, the first one, I cheated on a little bit, and Iâll tell you why. Elvis recorded âThatâs All Right Mamaâ in 1954, kind of on a lark, and it sold enough copies in the Memphis area to appear on the local charts, though it didnât chart nationally.
[THATâS ALL RIGHT Dylan]
Next up, would be Bob Dylan, who recorded the song for his 1963 album The Freewheelinâ Bob Dylan. However, the track was cut from the final release, supposedly because it wasnât good enough, but I suspect that it was also because it wasnât an original Dylan composition, as all the other tracks on the album were, with the exception of âCorrina Corrinaâ, which is in the public domain. But it did turn up on the 50th Anniversary Collection, which was released in Europe specifically to keep Dylanâs recordings from passing into the public domain.
[THATâS ALL RIGHT Beatles]
And finally, there would be The Beatles, who performed the song in July 1963 for the BBC, for a show called Pop Goes The Beatles, which aired a couple of weeks later. The Fab Four had been performing the song since they were doing Skiffle music as The Quarrymen, and Paul is so clearly imitating Elvis that itâs hard to tell itâs NOT Elvis unless you listen hardâŠ
Now, hereâs the other song, and weâll take the artists in reverse, order.
[YESTERDAY Beatles]
and itâs a little less cheat-y. The Beatles released âYesterdayâ as a single in September of 1965, and it went to Number One here in the US and a few other nations, but it was NOT released in the UK as a single, because the other three Beatles vetoed its release there, since they didnât appear on it. But of course, the song was already on the Help! album, and other artists began covering it almost immediately.
[YESTERDAY Dylan]
In 1970 Bob Dylan cut some tracks that collectively, are known as Almost Went to See Elvis, which was released in 1997, largely because there were so many bootleg versions out there. And one of the backup singers on this trackâŠwas George Harrison.
And around that same time, in February of 1970, Elvis recorded his shows at the International Hotel in Las Vegas, Nevada and released with the simple title, On Stage. The album cover is notable in that it has only the words On Stage and Elvisâ picture, but his name doesnât appear in print anywhere. But hereâs a bit of his version, which came out later that yearâŠ
[YESTERDAY Elvis]
âŠand by the way, we just talked about the song âProud Maryâ a couple of episodes ago. The very next track on this Elvis On Stage album? Is his cover of âProud Mary.â
And, thatâs a full lid on another edition of How Good It Is. If youâre enjoying the show, please take the time to share it with someone, and maybe even leave a rating somewhere.
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Next time around, weâre going to find out How Good It Is when we look at some songs that were inspired by books.
Thanks for listening, and Iâll talk to you next time.