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 socially distant, so thanks for bearing with me.
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.
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A public service announcement brought to you by AARP and the Ad Council.
Hereâs some groovy trivia for ye today:
What song literally came to Johnny Cash from out of the sky? No hints; âcause this one is fun. So once again: what song came to Johnny Cash, literally from the sky?
Iâll have that answer to that question, and the story behind it, near the end of the show.
Warren Zevon is one of those artists who got so much well-deserved love and respect from music philes and professional musicians, but never quite parlayed it into commercial success the way many of his collaborators did. But in 1978 he, along with a treasure trove of musical talents, put together his third album, which contained his biggest hit, and even that song still didnât manage to crack the Top 20.
But before we talk about that, we need to back up a couple of years, to 1975. Zevon was working with the Everly Brothers on a potential comeback album. Heâd hired Waddy Wachtel to play guitar as part of their backing band, and one night, Phil Everly saw an old horror movie from 1935, called Werewolf of London. The next day, Everly suggested that he adapt the title into a dance song, which, he joked, would become its own dance craze.
A little later on, Zevon, Wachtel and LeRoy Marinell were noodling around on their guitars when someone asked them what they were playing. Zevon told him it was âWerewolves of London,â which led Wachtel to start howling. And that got the creative juices flowing. Zevon came up with the line âI saw a werewolf with a Chinese menu in his hand,â and they all started kicking in lyrics until they hadâŚwell, something anyway. Call it a comic noir tableau. Zevonâs wife at the time, Crystal, managed to get everything written down but nobody really took the song seriously and they set it aside. It wasnât long after thatâin fact, one account says it was the next dayâthat Zevonâs friend Jackson Browne saw the lyrics and thought that the song had some potential. In fact his take on the song is that of a really well-dressed ladiesâ man, a werewolf preying on little old ladies. He sees the werewolf as more of a metaphor, a debauched Victorian Gentleman devoting his life to pleasure, hanging out with prostitutes in the gambling clubs, basically squandering the family fortune. And Browne distilled most of that from the one line, âIâd like to meet his tailor.â Most of that insight, incidentally, comes from an interview Browne did with Rolling Stone in 2003, which would have been the 25th anniversary of the song.
Anyway, since Jackson Browne was interested in getting Zevonâs name out there, he began performing the song at his concerts. Hereâs a recording of Jackson Browne playing the song during a radio special, at the Main Point in Bryn Mawr, Pennsylvania that same year:
[JACKSON BROWNE]
Later on in the song, he comments that itâd be cool to get the song on the radio. Then a moment later he realizes, oh yeah: he IS on the radio. Now, thatâs technically a bootleg recording, and it had Asylum Records thinking that Browne was going to record it in the studio. No word on whether they expected to hear that kazoo, though.
Around that same time, T-Bone Burnett was known to be performing the song during Bob Dylanâs Rolling Thunder Revue tour, often with alternate or improvised lyrics. And it pains me to say that I couldnât find audio of any of those performances. So âWerewolves of London,â and for that matter, âExcitable Boy,â were finished songs by then, but somehow managed not to make it onto Zevonâs second album, which was released in 1976. Iâm not sure about âExcitable Boy,â which eventually became the title track of that third album, but Zevon still just didnât like âWerewolvesâ enough to record it for himself.
[ZEVON]
Now, as quickly as the original composition came together, thatâs about how difficult it was for Zevon to get the song laid down in a way that he didnât completely hate. According to Waddy Wachtel, it was one of the hardest songs to get down in the studio that heâd ever worked on. Wachtel said that he used seven bands and innumerable combinations of musicians, finally recruiting Mick Fleetwood and John McVie from Fleetwood Mac to get the drums and bass done. For Wachtelâs part, he said he managed to get the guitar solo down in one take, and that piano line is actually a guitar lick that Marinell had kicking around unused for several years. But the fact is, they spent so much time getting the song down that it essentially ate up most of the budget for the whole Excitable Boy album.
[TENDERNESS]
Now, when Arista Records chose âWerewolves of Londonâ to be the lead single from the album, both Zevon and Wachtel were pretty insulted by the choice. In fact, both of them used a phrase to describe the song that Iâll not repeat here because children are listening, and I donât want them to have to explain it to you. But the bottom line is that they expected this track, âTenderness on the Block,â to be the single, or maybe the opening track âJohnny Strikes Up The Band.â
[ZEVON]
But, the label won out, and âWerewolvesâ became the only single from the album and Zevonâs biggest hit. However, as Zevon himself once said, (quote) âI donât think it was as big a hit as people think it was. People remember it from year to year moreâitâs been in movies and it gets trotted out regularlyâbut itâs not as if it sold four million copies, like a Paula Abdul single.â And heâd be right, because as I noted up top, the single peaked at Number 21 on the Billboard Hot 100, and so far as I know didnât chart anywhere else.
Before I move on, I guess I should address some of the geography in the song. If you want beef chow mein, you can in fact get it at Lee Ho Fook. Itâs been through several owners, but last I heard it was still located at 15-16 Gerrard Street in Londonâs Chinatown district, just a short walk from the Picadilly Circus station. If you take a quick look at the menu, you might have a tough time finding the beef chow mein, because itâs in the Noodles and Rice section as âStir Fried Soft noodle with beefâ.
Trader Vicâs can be found in the London Hilton Hotel on Park Lane. And, of course, if you want to run amuck in Kent, thereâs frequent train service from Waterloo Station.
[GRATEFUL DEAD]
There have been a couple of covers, including this one by the Grateful Dead, which played it a lot around 1978 and nine, and occasionally for Halloween concerts over the yearsâŚ
[SANDLER]
âŚand Adam Sandler recorded his version as part of the Zevon tribute album, Enjoy Every Sandwich. ItâsâŚnot the disaster I expected it to be.
All right. Let me get to whatâs probably considered the more controversial bit. Itâs not a cover of âWerewolvesâ but a sampling.
[ALL SUMMER LONG]
In 2007, Kid Rock sampled the piano riff from âWerewolves of Londonâ and a bunch of bits from Lynyrd Skynyrdâs âSweet Home Alabamaâ to put together this track, âAll Summer LongââŚ
Kid Rock credited all of the writers of both songs, plus himself, so that âAll Summer Longâ has eight credited writers: Kid Rock, plus the three writers of âWerewolvesâ and the four members of Lynyrd Skynyrd credited for âSweet Home Alabamaâ. And love it or hate it, it was a huge hit in 2008, hitting the top of the singles charts in the UK, Australia, the Netherlands, Scotland, Ireland and Germany, and Top 40 nearly everywhere else, including Number 23 on the Billboard Hot 100, Number Two on the Adult Contemporary chart, plus is crossed over to the US Country Singles chart, where it peaked at Number Four.
So whatâs the controversy about the song? This is my theory. Did you ever play Spotify Russian Roulette? Spotify Russian Roulette is a game where you load a playlist with five instances of the Queen/David Bowie song âUnder Pressureâ and one instance of Vanilla Iceâs âIce Ice Babyâ, which if you donât know, opens with a sample of the bass line from âUnder Pressure.â Then you set the playback to ârandomâ and, if you get Queen, you live. If you get Vanilla Ice, youâre out and you lose. I think itâs kind of the same thing here. While the opening to Kid Rockâs song is a little different from Zevonâs, if you miss that part and just hear the piano riff, you might think youâre getting Zevon, and instead you get Kid Rock. Personally, I donât really care because I like both songs. But, let me give you this. It does come around a little bit because, Warren Zevon also did a little bit of a mocking of âSweet Home Alabamaâ in a song from 1980 called, âPlay it All Night LongââŚ
And now, itâs time to answer todayâs trivia question. Back on Page Two I asked you about the song that literally came from the sky to Johnny Cash.
[SUNDAY MORNING COMINâ DOWN]
That would be this song, âSunday Morning Cominâ Down,â written by Kris Kristofferson. Johnny Cash told the story about how, one fine day in 1969, he and his wife June Carter Cash were at their home in the Nashville area, when a helicopter landed on their lawn. And out of the helicopter comes Kris Kristofferson, with a beer in his hand, telling the Cashes, âI thought this might be the best way to get a song to you.â For his part, however, Kristofferson says that his plan to hand-deliver the song by helicopter was a bit of a bust, because Johnny Cash wasnât home when he got there. Now, Ray Stevens did record the song first, and it reached Number 55 on the Country chart, and Kristofferson himself had it on his debut album, so Cash was the third to get his hands on it. But regardless of how it got to him, âSunday Morning Cominâ Downâ went to Number One of the Country Chart for Cash, and it also made it to Number 46 on the Hot 100.
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 meet up with another one of Mick Fleetwood and John McVieâs friends, a young lady named Rhiannon.
Thanks for listening, and Iâll talk to you next time.