Former Brownsville Station leader Cub Koda still records and performs two decades after his biggest hit “Smokin’ in the Boys’ Room” hit Number One.
You Ain’t Seen Nothin’ Yet
Bachman-Turner Overdrive
A song that inspired millions of rec-room air guitarists was recorded as a joke. “You Ain’t Seen Nothin’ Yet” was never meant to be released to the public, but it brought Bachman-Turner Overdrive to the top of the Billboard charts in November 1974.
Randy Bachman split with the popular Guess Who after the success of 1970’s American Woman LP. Several failed projects later, including a solo album and two records with the countrified Brave Belt, the guitarist hit on a winning formula — brawny rock with pop and heavy-metal touches. Along with bassist C.F. “Fred” Turner and Bachman brothers Robby (drums) and Tim (rhythm guitar), Randy chose the name Bachman-Turner Overdrive, borrowing it from a trucking trade magazine. This was not surprising considering the four heavyweight guys looked more like truckers than rock stars.
After suffering twenty-five record company rejections, BTO found a home with Mercury Records in 1973. Churning out two records with assembly-line precision, the predictably titled BTO and BTO II motored up the Hot One Hundred as high as Number Twelve with “Takin’ Care of Business” in 1974. Eager to follow up their 1974 chart success, the band sped to a Seattle, Washington studio to record their third album Not Fragile.
One night, after a session inspired by the work of Traffic rhythm guitarist Dave Mason, Bachman improvised an instrumental track. Later, clowning around, he made up some jokey lyrics to add to the mix. In rehearsal, he tried to make the band laugh, singing the new song, vocally impersonating James Cagney and other movie stars. While taping the tune, Bachman changed his approach, recording the vocals in one take, stuttering through them as a backhanded tribute to BTO’s manager and Randy’s other brother Gary who had a pronounced speech impediment. “You Ain’t Seen Nothin’ Yet,” as the song came to be known, was tucked away. Bachman was planning to send it to Gary after the sessions were over.
Completing the album, they offered the finished eight songs to Mercury’s Charlie Fach. He griped that he didn’t hear the magic single that would duplicate the success of “Takin’ Care of Business.” Bachman told Fach he did have one other song, but it wasn’t good enough to release. The vocal, he explained, was by turns sharp and flat, the band could be heard laughing at the end and worst of all, he stuttered through the whole thing.
Fach gave it a listen and immediately smelled gold. To him, “You Ain’t Seen Nothin’ Yet” was just the vehicle to take BTO to the top of the charts. There was a brightness to the track that was missing on the rest of the album. He insisted it be added to the Not Fragile lineup. Bachman yielded, but only if he could rerecord the vocal. The next day, he made several attempts to clean up the vocal track, each one worse than the last. “I tried to sing it,” Bachman is quoted in Fred Bronson’s book The Billboard Book of Number One Hits, “but I sounded like Frank Sinatra. It didn’t fit.”
Fach got his way, and the original version of the song was included on the album. But Bachman, who, as producer, had final say on single releases, refused to allow “You Ain’t Seen Nothin’ Yet” to be put out as a 45 despite the substantial radio play the song was earning as an album track. He was embarrassed by the song, thinking it was childish and dumb, and he would turn down the radio when it came on. Three long weeks passed before Bachman gave in and allowed “You Ain’t Seen Nothin’ Yet” to be pressed as a single. He still wasn’t convinced the song would be a smash. But he realized it carried the tradition of “Louie Louie” — great dumb rock and roll — so why not give it a chance?
The song entered the Billboard charts at the end of September 1974, and just seven weeks later, it soared to Number One for a week, becoming BTO’s biggest hit. “It’s a gold single now,” said Bachman in 1975. “I’m not so embarrassed anymore.”
Fame
David Bowie
“About ten, fifteen minutes a song,” said David Bowie in 1975. “[They didn’t] take very long to write. It wasn’t too hard, really.” The chameleon-like singer is referring to the time it took to put together the soul-powered Young Americans LP which included his biggest hit — “Fame.”
David Bowie finished production on his “plastic soul” album at Sigma Sound Studios in Philadelphia. His producer Tony Visconti returned to England to mix the tapes, then called The Gouster (Philly street slang for cool guy) at his home studio. Bowie set up camp in New York City, renting a large house on 20th Street. John Lennon was a frequent guest, and Bowie recalled that the two “spent endless hours talking about fame and what it was like not having your own life anymore.”
During one of those visits, Bowie decided to record a Lennon/McCartney song and proposed that Lennon sit in on the session. Lennon was pleased to have a chance to work with Bowie and agreed to play guitar on “Across the Universe,” a track that appeared on the Beatles’ Let It Be LP.
Time was booked at the Electric Lady Studios at 52 West 8th Street. The sessions began amid the psychedelic murals and dramatic lighting of the studio (originally installed by the studio’s founder Jimi Hendrix). Like most Bowie sessions, musicians didn’t arrive until midnight and worked through the night.
Things got off to a slow start. As Bowie fiddled with the recording console in the control booth, Lennon and guitarist Carlos Alomar jammed a version of Shirley and Company’s “Shame, Shame, Shame,” a current Top Forty hit. “What are you playing?” Bowie asked over the studio intercom. “A disco tune called ‘Shame, Shame, Shame,’ ” replied the former Beatle.
Bowie listened to the two men play, then he put pen to paper. Drawing on his conversations with Lennon, he wrote the words to “Fame” in under twenty minutes. “God!” said Bowie, “That session was fast. That was a whole evening’s work.”
Bowie grafted lyrics about the price of fame and the sting of being in the public eye to an unreleased R & B song called “Foot Stomping.” Commenting on the record in the Village Voice, Robert Christgau noted that Bowie’s rhyming “Fame” with pain “makes you believe it.” Running part of the “Foot Stomping” tape backward and cutting and pasting the melody, Bowie spliced together the basic disco-tinged track for “Fame.” Alomar and Lennon added finishing touches — guitar overdubs and a piano played backward.
Lennon was fascinated by Bowie’s writing process, which differed from his own workman-like approach. “[He] writes in the studio,” said Lennon. “He goes in with about four words and a few guys and starts laying down all this stuff and he has virtually nothing — he’s making it up in the studio.”
Bowie credited Lennon with providing the spark for “Fame.” “With John Lennon, it was more the influence of having him in the studio that helped,” said Bowie in November 1976. “There’s always a lot of adrenaline flowing when John is around, but his chief addition to it all was the high-pitched singing of ‘Fame.’ The riff came from Carlos, and the melody and most of the lyrics came from me, but it wouldn’t have happened if John hadn’t been there. He was the energy, and that’s why he’s got a credit for writing it; he was the inspiration.”
Meanwhile, Tony Visconti had finished mixing the rough Sigma Sound tapes, now called Young Americans. Visconti picked up the story. “About two weeks after I’d mixed the album,” he told John Tobler and Stuart Grundy in The Record Producers, “David phoned to say that he and John Lennon had got together one night and recorded this tune called ‘Fame.’ ‘I hope you don’t mind, Tony, but it was so spontaneous and spur of the moment. And we did “Across The Universe” … we got on great.’ He was very apologetic and nice about it, and he said he hoped I wouldn’t mind if we took a few tracks off and included these, and I said that was all right.”
Visconti didn’t hear either of the new tracks until the record was released. “I wish I’d been in the studio with them,” he continued. “But David wasn’t really elbowing me. It was really spontaneous — I was in Engla
nd, and David was in New York with John — and that’s exactly the way it happened.”
“Fame” earned David Bowie his first American Number One single. Lennon took a metaphysical view of the song’s good fortune. After the breakup of the Beatles, Paul, George and Ringo all topped the charts. But Lennon was unable to emulate their solo success. It took “Whatever Gets You Through the Night,” a 1974 duet with Elton John, to get the Liverpudlian back at the Number One slot. “I felt like that was a karmic thing, you know,” he told a reporter in 1975. “With me and Elton, I got my first Number One, so I passed it on to Bowie, and he got his first … I like that track.”
David Bowie unveils his star on Hollywood’s Walk of Fame. In 1975, he released Young Americans, a soul music tribute. “I tried to do a little stretch of how it feels musically in America,” he said, “which is sort of relentless plastic soul.”
How Long
Ace
In 1974, the pub-rock band Ace were poised on the verge of stardom. They were receiving favorable notices in the press and were about to record their debut album. Then disaster struck. A band member decided to leave just as things were starting to happen. Band leader Paul Carrack was hurt and angry and wrote a song about it. “How Long” hit the Billboard Top Five in 1975.
A keyboardist with the soul of a roving minstrel, Carrack has sung and played on many hits including chart entries by Roxy Music, Eric Clapton, Squeeze and Mike and the Mechanics. As a well-respected session player, he had enjoyed a prolific and lucrative career without ever becoming a household name. However, in the early seventies, he had his eye on rock-and-roll stardom.
By 1974, it looked like he was well on his way. The London newspapers were running hundreds of column inches on a new music trend. For several years immediately preceding punk rock, there was a proliferation of groups who played guitar-based American-tinged rock in pubs and hostelries. Dubbed pub rock by the press, the scene produced many players who would later find fame. Brinsley Schwartz, one of the leading lights of pub rock, produced both Dave Edmunds and Nick Lowe. Another popular player on the scene was Paul Carrack, singer in the band Ace. With a smooth-as-silk vocal delivery, he lent credibility to Ace’s attempts at re-creating American soul music.
As fast-rising pub rockers, Ace were offered the opening slot on a Hawkwind tour. At one show, they were scouted by record producer John Anthony who offered them a deal on the Anchor Records’ label. On the eve of the first sessions for their debut Five-A-Side, Drummer John Woodward tendered his resignation to join the Sutherland Brothers & Quiver, a more successful group. Carrack was furious, fearing the departure would queer his deal with Anchor and his shot at stardom. Why hadn’t Woodward said something earlier? “How long,” he wanted to know, “had this been going on?”
Feeling cheated and spurned, he wrote a song, changing the context to a story about a girl who has discovered that her boyfriend had two-timed her. As a jab at his former bandmate, he dedicated the tune to Woodward. The playlist for the LP had already been decided on, but when Carrack presented “How Long” to the band, they voted to drop another track and release the new tune as a single. It was a fortuitous decision. “How Long” peaked at Number Three on the Billboard charts in 1975. It was Ace’s only hit.
The band limped along for the next three years, unable to top the success of their first single. More albums followed, with Woodward returning to the drum kit on Time for Another, the third and final Ace album.
The original recording of Pink Floyd’s “Time” included a cuckoo clock in the opening cacophony of clanging timepieces. David Gilmour felt the chiming birdcall destroyed the mood of the piece, so it was removed. The raw sound effects for the clock section were provided by engineer Alan Parsons (who hit the US Top Five in 1982 with the Alan Parson’s Project single “Eye in the Sky”), Parsons recorded all the clocks separately on a Uher portable tape machine at an antique shop in St. John’s Wood, close to Abbey Road Studios. They were originally intended to be released on a quadrophonic sound-effects album.
Philadelphia Freedom
Elton John
A gift of tennis gear inspired a song that topped the Billboard charts for two weeks in 1975. “Philadelphia Freedom” was Elton John’s musical tribute to Wimbledon champ Billie Jean King.
In the spring of 1974, Elton John (real name, Reginald Kenneth Dwight) was appointed the director of the Watford Football Club, trumpeting his passion for sports to the world. This wasn’t a new interest for John. As a child, he pinned up posters of soccer players on his walls and, with his father as chaperon, often attended games at his local playing field. The heavy burden of constant piano lessons thwarted any hope of John becoming a first-line pick at school soccer games. He was a better tennis player, but ultimately his love of Chopin and Brahms won out over a sporting life. By 1974, having secured worldwide fame, he rekindled his childhood interest in two typically English pastimes — tennis and soccer.
While John was devising methods to rescue the failing Watford team, the World Team Tennis League was being formed in the United States. The piano player became a fan of Billie Jean King’s team — the Philadelphia Freedoms — and once, much to his delight, even played a match against the seasoned champion.
John frequently attended games, often allowing his English reserve to melt away as he hooted and hollered his support for the Freedoms. He was such an ardent fan that King commissioned tennis-clothing designer Ted Tingling to make up a customized Philadelphia Freedoms warm-up suit for John. He was so touched by the gesture that he vowed to write a song as a thank-you note.
After consulting with lyricist Bernie Taupin, the duo came up with a tribute to Philadelphia and the indefatigable spirit King showed in starting the World Tennis League. The musical arrangement pays tribute to Philadelphia record producers Gamble and Huff whose influence is indelibly stamped on the single’s slick Tamla/Motown-cum-disco backbeat. Bed tracks for the song were recorded at Caribou, a studio on a ranch nine thousand feet up in the Colorado mountains.
King heard the song in Denver several months later while preparing for an important match when John brought a rough demo tape of the song to her dressing room. She was flattered and astounded that the biggest music star in the world had written a song for her. Snapping the tape into a cassette deck, John asked King to pay special attention to the thudding beat behind the chorus. “Hear the beat? That’s you when you get mad on the court,” he teased.
“Philadelphia Freedom” was Elton John’s third Number One hit in the US in twelve months. But it didn’t fare as well back home. Before the advent of MTV in Britain, the BBC1 television show Top of the Pops was the main means of exposure for new singles. John was caught in a dispute with the British Musicians’ Union which demanded that any song performed on television have its orchestra track specially recorded by British musicians. John argued that the distinctive Philadelphia sound of the tune couldn’t be reproduced by British players and as proof, offered a tape from the original American sessions. The Musicians’ Union balked at John’s proposal, and the singer was prevented from appearing on the hit-making show. As a result, the record stalled at Number Twelve on the British charts.
Since then, the original 45 of “Philadelphia Freedom” has become quite a collectable. As with John’s other 1975 Number One “Lucy in the Sky With Diamonds,” “Philadelphia Freedom” was released only as a single. Coupled with a rare concert B-side recording of “Whatever Gets You Through the Night” featuring John Lennon, the “Philadelphia Freedom” 45 is a much-sought-after piece of Elton John memorabilia.
Elton John performing onstage in November 1995. Twenty-two years before he recorded a musical eulogy for Diana Spencer, John topped the American charts with “Philadelphia Freedom,” a tribute to Wimbledon tennis champ Billie Jean King.
Only Women Bleed
Alice Cooper
It’s not all fun and games in the studio. It takes a lot of hard work to record an album, but sometimes fun and games is just the d
iversion a band needs. “We were in the middle of “Only Women Bleed,” and we just couldn’t get it,” said Bob Ezrin, producer of Alice Cooper’s megahits of the seventies.
In 1970, Vincent Furnier’s dream of being as famous as the Beatles and the Rolling Stones seemed a long way off. “… Tuneless singing, tuneless playing, tuneless tunes.…” was one critic’s reaction to 1970’s Easy Anion, his band’s second album. “A tragic waste of vinyl,” said another. Their outrageous live show garnered lots of column inches, but with no hits and no sales, Alice Cooper (as both Furnier and his band were called) seemed to be withering on the vine.
During a stopover in Toronto to play at the Strawberry Fields Festival in April 1970, Cooper’s manager Shep Gordon tried to get an audience with producer Jack Richardson. Best known for producing a string of Guess Who hit singles, Richardson ran Nimbus Nine Studios. As the singer recalled in his long-out-of-print biography Me, Alice, “It wasn’t that Richardson was the only producer in the world, he was the last producer who hadn’t turned us down.” Richardson, used to working with more conventional bands, saw no future in producing an act that seemed to value theatricality over music. Instead, junior producer Bob Ezrin, described by Cooper as “a nineteen-year-old Jewish hippie,” was sent to deal with the band.
A meeting was set up, but Ezrin was unprepared for what he would find. “He walked into our hotel room, and I saw panic on his face,” recalled Cooper in his memoirs, “as if he had just opened a surprise package and found a box full of maggots.” The teenage producer turned the band down, citing a lack of salable sound or talent.
However, he had a change of heart in October 1970 after seeing the band perform live in New York City. “I flipped,” said Ezrin in an interview in 1994. “I thought I had seen the future. I was in a club — Max’s Kansas City — full of people in spandex and spider eyes, and every song that Alice did, they knew the words to. And they knew all the actions. It was kind of like the Rocky Horror Picture Show where you get that cult following, and people show up in the same uniforms and costumes. It was audience-participation rock. Rock theater.
Who Wrote the Book of Love? Page 11