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 itâs been a busy couple of weeks.
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. And if you can swing it, please consider supporting the show as a patron. For just five dollars a month you get the weekly newsletter, with the weekâs music news, a little bit of my opinions, and the history calendar. Just a diversionary âthank youâ on my part. Click the link on the website or point your browser to patreon dot com slash how good it is.
[PR]
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[TRIVIA]
OK, I have no idea whether youâll find this weekâs trivia question to be easy or hard, but here we go: What do the following musicians have in common? We have:
Paul Rodgers
Eric Burdon
Graham Nash
And Paul Carrack. What do all those guys have in common? Iâll have that answer for ye at the end of the show.
Iâve been on a little bit of a kick lately with the songs that have foreign lyrics in them. Not like I did back in Episode 50, which focused on songs that were entirely, or nearly so, not in English, but on songs where a line, or a verse, isnât in English. Today weâre going to peek at a couple more songs in that genre. Is that a genre? It is now, I guess.
And Iâm willing to bet that, for a couple of them anyway, youâre going to be a little bit surprised.
So Iâm going to start by telling you a little bit about a movie from 1960, called Les Yeux Sans Visage. Itâs a horror film, but itâs not a gory one. There are a lot of humanistic themes in it. Itâs about a gifted plastic surgeon who is involved in a car accident which badly disfigures his beautiful daughter. The surgeon begins to kidnap young women so that he can remove their faces and graft them onto his daughter to restore her looks. And because the grafts keep failing, the daughter is forced to wear a plastic mask with very plain features, so that only her eyes are visible. Meanwhile the doctor keeps obsessively kidnapping women and stealing their faces. The daughter has become essentially eyes without a face, and the doctor, having blinded himself to the monster he’s become, is a face without eyes.
[EYES WITHOUT A FACE]
Itâs a truly chilling film, and even if youâre watching it with subtitles, you will be genuinely riveted by it.
This film, and the title in particular, were the inspiration for Billy Idolâs 1984 song âEyes Without a Faceâ, which is the English translation for âLes Yeux Sans Visage.â Now, the songâs lyrics donât echo the plot of the movie, itâs one of Idolâs softer and more introspective tunes. In the song, Idol is basically wallowing in guilt for having ruined a relationship, and now heâs coming to terms with just how petty heâs been. And the female voice you hear during the song, which is provided by his girlfriend at the time, backup singer and dancer Perri Lister. And sheâs singingâŚâLes Yeux Sans Visage.â
[LES YEUX SANS VISAGE clip]
Incidentally, a woman appears in the video for the song but you canât see her very clearly, and Perri Lister isnât credited in the video, so I donât think itâs her. But on the other hand, I donât know who that is.
Incidentally, Billy Idol had himself a little horror movie scenario while making the video. It took about three days to shoot the video, which involved a lot of fog and fire sources. Right after the shoot, Idol flew to Arizona to perform in a show, and fell asleep on the plane. He woke up to discover that the combination of the fog and fire, plus the dry air on the plane, had caused his contact lenses to fuse to his eyeballs. He had to check into a hospital to get the lenses removed, he had to have his corneas scraped, and his eyes were bandaged for several days while the corneas grew back. Isnât that a weird parallel? Billy Idol singing about eyes without a face, becoming the face without eyes.
OK, let me tell you now about a game show that ran in Europe from 1962 to 1999. Now, in this game, teams from various participating countries would dress in crazy costumes to complete bizarre tasks. Each game is judged by a pair of judges and the winner is determined at the end of each season. Itâs truly weird in a fun way, and itâs very physical stuff, and Iâll include a couple of links at the website so you can see what Iâm talking about. The show is typically known by its French name, Jeux Sans Frontières.
[GAMES WITHOUT FRONTIERS]
In 1979, Peter Gabriel took the showâs concept of different countries battling over small matters and expanded it to encompass the idea of world nations and their displays of territorialism, nationalism, and all the other little pettiness that nations can go through. He gave the lyrics an overlay of children playing games: Hans plays with Lotte, Lotte plays with Jane, Jane plays with Willi, and so forth. But when he gets to the next verse, the tensions are ramping upâŚ
[SECOND VERSE]
âŚand the title of the song, of course, is âGames Without Frontiers,â which is the English translation of âJeux sans frontières”, and itâs the phrase thatâs sung repeatedly at the beginning, the middle, and the end of the song. Incidentally, thatâs Kate Bush singing âJeux sans frontiers” in this record. So, no: sheâs not singing âSheâs so popular,â which is what most people assume it is. And while Iâm at it I should note that the whistling is Peter Gabriel, along with producers Steve Lillywhite and Hugh Padgham.
Oh, and thereâs one final connection between the song and the TV show: while most people refer to the show by its French nameâin fact, the showâs logo involves the letters J, S, and Fâfor some reason in England itâs called Itâs a Knockout.
OK, hereâs a quick one for you. And for this one we jump back to 1969 and a group called The Tee Set, which puts the foreign phrase right there in the title:
[MA BELLE AMIE]
âŚâMa Belle Amieâ just means, âmy beautiful friend,â and the spelling indicates that the friend is female. But waitâthereâs a little more French going onâŚ
âŚWhat heâs singing there is âAprès tous les beaux jours, Je te dis merci merci,â which translates to âAfter all the beautiful days, I say to you, thank you, thank you.â See? Easy one, and you already knew it wasnât in English.
[SUITE JUDY BLUE EYES]
All right, everything weâve talked about today so far has been French, so letâs move on to another language: Spanish.
OK, sure, Iâm skipping over the fact that the title has a French word in it, but letâs move past that. Did you know that âSuite: Judy Blue Eyesâ had Spanish lyrics in it? If you, like so many others, werenât listening closely, thereâs an entire verse of the song sung in Spanish, near the end. Stephen Stills put this part of the song in Spanish partly because he didnât want it to be easily understood, and partly because the words donât have a lot to do with the rest of the song. And finally, he added it in because he felt that the ending was just kind of lying there and needed a little perking up. Incidentally, while Crosby, Stills and Nash all sang on this record, of the three only Stephen Stills is playing any instruments, with percussion provided by Dallas Taylor. Letâs listen in and Iâll translate for you:
[SJBE CODA]
“How nice it would be to take you to Cuba
The queen of the Caribbean Sea
I only want to visit you there
And how sad that I can’t, damn!”
See? Not much to do with the rest of the song.
And now itâs time to answer todayâs trivia question. Back on Page Two I asked you What these five men have in common? They are:
Paul Rodgers
Eric Burdon
Graham Nash
And Paul Carrack.
The answer is that they all sang on hit songs for more than one band.
Paul Rodgers was the voice of Free and Bad Company, Eric Burdon was out front for both The Animals and War, Graham Nash sang on hits for both The Hollies and Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young. And finally, Paul Carrack was the lead voice for Ace and for Mike and the Mechanics. And while he didnât sing, he was also a key part of Roxy Music and Squeeze for awhile.
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, and now you can support the show over at Patreon dot com, slash How Good It Is.
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Next time around, weâre going to find out How Good It Is when we look In Your Eyesâby listener request!
Thanks for listening, and Iâll talk to you next time.