FTV: Let It Ride

 

     Have you ever tried to write a song?  If one plays an instrument, I am willing to put money down that the thought has crept into mind that it shouldn’t be that hard to do…until one tries.

Strumming an interesting chord pattern or hearing a phrase that sounds like it would make a good song title are a far cry from actually assembling an entire song.  I am always amazed when a true songwriter will get into the logistics of how a particular song was created.  The stories range from, “Oh, that one wrote itself in ten minutes” to “I had kicked this one around for ten years before it was finished.”  Remembering the old line from the 1971 movie Magnum Force, (“A man’s got to know his limitations”), I have been content interpreting songs written by those with the talent to do the heavy lifting.  None-the-less, my lack of skill in that area does not prevent me from enjoying stories about where songwriters get their inspirations.

     Bachman-Turner Overdrive (B.T.O.) had a hit with the song named checked above.  As Randy Bachman tells it, early in their touring life they were on the freeway headed to an opening slot with the Doobie Brothers in New Orleans in 1973.  At some point, a large semi pulled up to the right of their van, followed by another to their left.  Randy was driving so he planned on slowing down to get out of the box they were in, only to find a third semi right behind him.  The three trucks slowed to 35 miles an hour and he could see them laughing as they talked back and forth on their CB radios.  It dawned on Bachman that their Manitoba license plates said ‘Friendly Manitoba’ on them – apparently these guys wanted to see just how friendly Manitobans were.

     When the trucks took an off ramp to a truck stop, Randy followed.  He recalled, “Fred (Turner) and I were the big guys in the band so we were all set to give them some grief about boxing us in.  The first guy got out of his truck and he looked like a refrigerator with a head stuck on top.”  Faced with this 6 foot 6 inch man-mountain, they decided to take a softer approach than Bachman and Turner had originally planned.  The trucker just said, “Hey, we were just trying to see how ‘friendly’ you guys from Manitoba are – let it ride.”  The potentially tense situation ended there and B.T.O. left with the seed of an idea that would become a hit record. 

     Let It Ride came out on Bachman-Turner Overdrive II in 1973 and reached No 23 on the U.S.

Billboard Hot 100 on April 27, 1974 and No. 3 in Canada.  It was the song that got them noticed and their next 1974 single (Takin’ Care of Business) made B.T.O. headliners.  Takin’ Care of Business has an even more convoluted origin story that still makes Randy Bachman chuckle to this day.  When he was still with The Guess Who, he decided to write a song using The Beatles’ Paperback Writer as a model.  The Beatles, for their part, had written Paperback Writer after being inspired by Chuck Berry’s Johnny B. Goode.  The lyrics of the first version of Randy’s tune (then called White Collar Worker) were inspired by the blind recording engineer at the New York studio where The Guess Who were working.  Bachman asked if he could ride the train home with the technician because he had never known a blind person and wondered how he managed to get around on his own.  White Collar Worker tells the engineer’s story right from the ‘Get up in the morning to the alarm clock’s warning, take the 8:15 into the city’ on.

     Guess Who keyboardist / vocalist Burton Cummings more or less shamed Bachman for copying The Beatles and said they would never record the song for fear of being sued.  Bachman kept working on it with his post Guess Who band Brave Belt (who would later morph into B.T.O.).  Brave Belt was about to get fired from a gig they were playing in Thunder Bay, Ontario because the crowds were not responding to their original songs.  They resorted to playing danceable covers on their last night and out of desperation, Randy trotted out White Collar Worker when Turner’s voice gave out.  

     On the way to the gig, he had heard radio DJ Daryl B’s catch phrase, “We’re taking care of business,” and made a mental note that it might make a good song title.  Randy replaced White Collar Worker in the lyrics with Takin’ Care of Business and they got an immediate positive response.  He recalled, “When we finished the song that night, people kept clapping, stomping, and shouting ‘takin’ care of business’ over and over.  So we picked up the tempo again and reprised the song for another ten minutes.  Afterwards, we all knew we had something.” 

     As big as ‘Business’ was (No 12 in the U.S. and No. 3 in Canada), B.T.O.’s only No. 1 hit turned out to be You Ain’t Seen Nothin’ Yet from 1974’s Not Fragile album which topped the Billboard Hot 100 on November 9, 1974.  That song started as a joke ribbing one of the brothers who stuttered.  The label suits heard it and wanted it to be the next single.  The rest is history.  They actually tried to record a version without the stuttering chorus, but in the end it didn’t have the same punch so they settled for the original ‘joke’ version to get to No. 1.

     Hearing Billy Joel’s Big Shot on the radio recently, it recalled an interview where he had talked about the song.  He admitted that, “the mock-reproachful chorus (You had to be a big shot, didn’t you, you had to open up your mouth , , ,) were partly a reflection on his own self-distructive habits,” but the original theme went a little deeper.  Joel explained his inspiration behind the song was a dinner he had with Mick Jagger and his then-wife Bianca.  The idea was to write about how he imagined Mick felt about his wife’s partying and socialite behavior. Viewed with this angle in mind, the lyrics make perfect sense, right down to the wardrobe decisions and the morning after hangover regrets. 

      Until I read this account, I had always thought Joel was poking holes in his own rock star image.  He has always been one to take his observations from real life as the inspiration for songs.  The track Scenes from an Italian Restaurant, for example, was another scenario he put into a song after an encounter with a waiter at one of Joel’s favorite restaurants (Italian, of course).  The waiter came to his table and asked, “A bottle fo white, a bottle or red, perhaps a bottle of rose instead?” which immediately stuck in his mind.  The rest of the seven minute long tale of Brenda and Eddie was made up, but the set up did indeed happen in an Italian restaurant.  Scenes was released on his 1977 album The Stranger and Big Shot was a track on 1978’s 52nd Street.

     Drummer Corky Laing was responsible for the song Mississippi Queen long before guitarist Leslie West and bassist / producer Felix Pappalardi recorded this classic song.  Laing’s pre-Mountain band (Energy) was playing a beach club on Nantucket Island when the power went out.  He had been watching a girl (whom someone had told him was from Mississippi and was named Molly) dancing before the lights went out.  As she kept dancing in the emergency lights, he was afraid she was going to leave the club.  Corky took the beat from Up On Cripple Creek, added the now iconic cowbell, and began singing Mississippi Queen at the top of his voice.  When Molly turned to look at him, he added the You know what I mean part.  This went on long enough that by the time the lights came back on, he had wrecked his voice in the pursuit of a woman who left the bar with someone else.

     Leslie West and Pappalardi played at the Woodstock Festival, but with a different drummer and keyboard player than the ones who recorded Mississippi Queen.  Leslie wanted to make an album called Mountain and somehow that is how the band was billed at Woodstock.  The original drummer (Norman Smart) didn’t like the loud direction of the band and after actually asking West and Pappalardi if they could turn down the volume, he was sacked.  Felix approached Laing about taking the drum slot as they were also adding keys player Steve Knight to formally begin the band they would call Mountain.  

     When Corky showed West the outline of Mississippi Queen, he cranked out the famous riff and, according to Laing, “The song basically wrote itself.”  To the notion that it only took a few takes to get it all down on tape, Leslie replied, “Bull, we only did two takes.”  Pappalardi knew that Corky had previously met Jimi Hendrix in Canada.  Jimi was recording across the hall at the Record Plant so Felix asked if Laing would go over and ask if he would like to hear their new track.  Jimi obliged and after hearing the playback, he sang the riff and said, “That is cool!”

One of my favorite versions of Mississippi Queen is the one The Rusty Wright Band played when they appeared at the Ontonagon Theater for the Performing Arts.

     Peter Frampton hit his stride as a songwriter about four bands into his career.  He started as a heart-throb teen idol in The Herd.  He left them to join Humble Pie before forming Frampton’s Camel.  His biggest breakthrough came when the hits from his Frampton Comes Alive double album began dominating the radio waves.  It was during his time with Humble Pie that he experienced one of those magical musical moments with a song that he didn’t actually write.  Unfortunately, even Spotify labels I Don’t Need No Doctor as a ‘song and lyrics by Peter Frampton’.

     The song was written by Nick Ashford, Valarie Simpson, and Jo Armstead and recorded by Ashford in 1966.  Ray Charles made it popular when he put his own spin on it.  The fiery take that appears on Humble Pie’s 1971 album Performance Rockin’ the Fillmore actually turned it into a hard rock anthem just as Frampton exited the band.  Peter used to use a power chord progression from the song to test the acoustics when they were doing soundchecks before a show.  One night, singer / guitarist Steve Marriott was in the back of the hall when he heard Frampton warming up.  He dashed to the stage yelling at Peter to keep playing and Marriott broke into the song.  Drummer Jerry Shirley and bass player Greg Ridley joined in and they arranged the song on the spot.  They played Doctor for their closer that night and every night from then on.  The popularity of this version has led many (including Spotify, apparently) to credit Frampton for writing the song.  

     There are many examples when a throw away guitar riff has inspired a great song.  When the Eagles heard Joe Walsh doing a warm up exercise he used to limber up his fingers, they said, “Whoa, that could be something.”  It didn’t really take shape as a song until Glenn Frey was a passenger enroute to a poker game.  As the driver weaved in and out of traffic on the freeway, he said, “Well, that’s life in the fast lane,” which set Frey’s creative mind in motion.  Kerry Livgren of Kansas had a similar experience when his wife heard him doing a picking pattern he also used as a warm up.  She said, “You know, you should use that in a song,” and one thing led to another.  The end creation became one of the biggest hits in the Kansas catalog, Dust In The Wind.  

     Studio time is a precious commodity so producers and artists do not like to waste it.  Jay and the Americans had a No. 3 Billboard Hot 100 hit in 1964 with a song called Come A Little Bit Closer.  The song was written by Tommy Boyce, Bobby Hart, and Wes Farrell but Kenny Vance said it was one of those ‘accidental’ hits for The Americans.  Vance recounted a typical studio session back then ran three hours with the musicians getting paid $65 per hour.  The Americans had spent most of the session working on a song that just wouldn’t come together.  Rather than wasting the entire day, they decided to take a run at Come A Little Bit Closer right at the end of the session.  I remember my sister being excited about seeing them in concert at NMU in the 1960s.  It was one of the first times I can remember hearing a nationally known band on the radio that also appeared locally.

     Before he appeared on programs like Burt Sugarman’s Midnight Special or Don Kirchner’s Rock Concert, Cub Koda attended Northern Michigan University.  No one would doubt his songwriting cred if the only thing he had written was Smokin’ in the Boy’s Room.  We were in awe of him back when we were scratching together enough equipment to start playing gigs because Koda played his guitar through TWO Fender Twin Reverb amps.  To add to our astonishment, he threw in a good dose of something we were not familiar with – slide guitar.  The slide was put to great use in a song he wrote called Tony Baloney.  I can’t say for sure if he ever recorded it, but when he was still a college student, it hinted at what was to come.  It  still makes me smile when I think of it.

     Michael’s band (he wasn’t ‘Cub’ yet) had recently played a gig at a bar in Ishpeming.  I won’t name any names here, but the owner had a reputation for not liking loud bands.  Koda’s band was exactly that and although I hadn’t heard them play in that establishment, the slide infused rocker they played at the gig I was at told the story.  The chorus was the key:  Tony Baloney says yer playin’ yer blues much too loud… and each time he sang that refrain, he did a George Thoroughgood like ‘WAAAAAAAA’ up the neck with his slide – kind of like he was adding an exclamation point.  When they finished, Koda said, “Well, I am guessing we won’t be playing at Tony Baloney’s place any more!”

     My old Sledgehammer guitar player Barry says he does not remember writing any original tunes when we were together, but I reminded him we almost did.  Barry was warming up with a chord progression and a connecting riff before one rehearsal.  We asked him, “What is that?” and he replied, “Oh, just something I have been working on.”  When we joined him, he began singing a few lyrics and each section ended with, ‘We’re gonna knock down the opposite wall.’

I probably remember this because my previous band had been called ‘Knockdown’ which no doubt came up in conversation.  After we fooled around with it a bit, Barry said, “I like the progression but I have to put some thought into the lyrics before we try it again.”  Were we close to writing a song?  Hard to say as Barry never did finish Knockdown the Opposite Wall and we never played it again.

     To his credit, Barry did go on to write some catchy tunes over the years and if you search out Barry Seymour, you will not have trouble finding what he has posted online.  Barry gives me a good place to end this FTV that started with B.T.O. because not only was our Sledgehammer name  inspired by the band’s song, we did more than a fair share of their tunes.  After all, our business cards said, “Sledgehammer – We Don’t Do Polkas!”

Top Piece Video:  From June of 2012, B.T.O. and their tune inspired by an encounter with truckers wondering how friendly Manitobans were . . . but you will notice, only the title remains and no trucks are mentioned in the lyrics!