Who Wrote the Book of Love?

by Richard Crouse

  Soon after, Rubin recruited Bill Stephney into the Def Jam family. Stephney convinced the doubtful duo that Rubin and company were alright and would treat them fairly. Naming themselves after their signature tune, Public Enemy signed with the record label in 1987.

  Increasing the lineup to include a surreal and visually intimidating crew of rappers and a DJ — Professor Griff (Richard Griffin) ‘Minister of Information’; Flavor Flav, DJ Terminator X (Norman Rogers); and a four-piece plastic Uzi-packing backup group, the S1Ws (Security of the First World) — Ridenhour drew on his arts background to design a look for the band, one previously unseen in rap circles. Chuck D.’s ball cap, drawn down tight to his nose, countered Flavor Flav’s outlandish “coal lamper” appearance. The unsmiling S1Ws’ combat fatigues gave them a stern militaristic aura. The effect was striking — and just a bit menacing. Writing in Rolling Stone, Lewis Cole called this configuration “a political rap group as seen through the eyes of a Marvel Comics illustrator.”

  Public Enemy’s first Def Jam offering, 1987’s Yo! Bum Rush the Show, took its title from the story of a B-boy gatecrashing a nightclub. The band set itself a cut above the rest, using Chuck D.’s thundering vocal delivery to great effect, butted against a lean, hard sound supplied by DJ Terminator X. With the release of the first album, Public Enemy saw themselves bum rushing the music industry. After moving 300,000 units of Yo! Bum Rush the Show (and triple that for subsequent releases), the band named after a song became the most influential rap act in the industry, imitated by many, but equaled by none.

  Love Rescue Me

  U2

  U2 were in the United States to record an album that would pay homage to their heroes — the seminal figures of American music that had helped mold their multiplatinum sound. One night, a curious dream, the result of too much partying, led Bono Vox (real name, Paul Hewson) to write the lyrics to one of U2’s most sincere songs, “Love Rescue Me,” from 1988’s Rattle and Hum.

  After scoring a Paul Bunyon-size hit with The Joshua Tree (1987), Irish rockers U2 were poised on the ladder between mammoth achievement and international stardom. The Rattle and Hum project was conceived as a multimedia assault — a “live” record, videos and concert motion picture — designed to penetrate any outlying parts of the world that weren’t yet U2 fans. It worked. Despite taking a sound trouncing from reviewers, Rattle and Hum went on to sell fourteen million copies, establishing Bono, Edge (David Evans), Adam Clayton and Larry Mullen as the biggest band in the world.

  In the winter of 1987, U2 set out to write what would become Rattle and Hum. Seeking a change of venue in which to write new songs — Dublin being a cold, wet place in the winter — U2 chose Los Angeles, a city overflowing with all that is healthy and decayed in the blueprint of the American dream they planned to chronicle. The band’s guitarist Edge rented a house in Beverly Hills for his wife and kids, with Bono as a temporary houseguest. (The residence would later gain ignominy as the site of the murder of José and Kitty Menendez at the hands of their sons Lyle and Erik.)

  After a night of fraternizing and drinking, Bono slept fitfully in the guest house, dreaming of one of his idols, Bob Dylan. A lifelong Dylan devotee, Bono had met the fabled folkie several times, once performing with him in 1984. The Dylan tune “Maggie’s Farm” had long been a staple in U2’s live set. In his dream, Bono saw Dylan onstage, singing a song about a man whose life was falling apart while those around him lavished him with praise and turned to him for redemption. In the end, all the man craved was the love and salvation that was demanded of him. It is conjecture whether the lyrics in the dream were actually a metaphor for Dylan’s life and career — an ephemeral treatise on the folk singer’s unwanted place in history as the mouthpiece of a generation.

  Bono woke, jotting down the lyrics from the dream through sleepy eyes. Some time later, Bono met Dylan and brought the hastily written lyrics. “Is this one of yours?” Bono asked, showing Dylan the song. Dylan assured the younger singer it wasn’t but said he found the rough-hewn lyrics engrossing. At the meeting’s end, the two agreed to flesh out the lyrics, turning Bono’s dream into a song.

  The songwriters collaborated on the lyrics, with U2 providing the music. Dylan actually recorded a country ballad version of “Love Rescue Me” which was to be included on Rattle and Hum, but he later asked that the song not be used to avoid a conflict of interest with his band the Traveling Wilburys. U2 rerecorded the tune, with Bono using Dylan’s unique phrasing as a guide, but with the addition of the Memphis Horns which lent the song a country-soul flavor.

  While “Love Rescue Me” did not chart, Rattle and Hum was Number One on the album charts for six weeks.

  Bono, lead singer of Irish supergroup U2 sports a muscle shirt in 1997. “Love Rescue Me” was originally planned as a duet between U2 and Bob Dylan before Dylan stepped down, citing conflicts with his new band the Traveling Wilbury’s.

  One

  Metallica

  Metal kings Metallica riffed their way into the Top Forty with an antiwar song inspired by a novel by a blacklisted writer. “One,” the story of a mutilated, bedridden soldier, peaked at Number Thirty-Five on the Billboard charts in March 1989.

  Metallica’s fourth album, …And Justice for All, delivered on drummer Lars Ulrich’s promise that the band would make a record “with no sacrifices, no compromises, no corners cut.” A thrash masterpiece of epic proportions, the sixty-five-minute record bristles with emotional power, and with most songs clocking in at over six minutes, it challenges the listener to keep pace with the bristling speed guitar. Taking the album’s name from a Norman Jewison film that explores the corruption and hypocrisy in the court system, the band expands on that theme, producing an album of unyielding lyrical content. “Eye of the Beholder” is a diatribe against censorship, inspired by the Frankenchrist obscenity case that bankrupted Jello Biafra’s Alternative Tentacles record label. Another cut, “The Shortest Straw,” is a heavy-handed look at the McCarthy era Communist witch-hunt.

  …And Justice for All’s most fully realized track is “One,” a dramatic antiwar parable of a maimed soldier, arms and legs amputated, waiting to die. Two books led to the creation of this song. The band’s manager recommended they read Victor Navasky’s Naming Names, an account of Senator Joseph McCarthy’s infamous blacklisting of suspected Communists. In that book, they came across the name Dalton Trumbo, a writer who had scripted several Hollywood classics including Kitty Foyle, Spartacus and Thirty Seconds Over Tokyo. As one of the Hollywood Ten, he was briefly jailed for refusing to answer McCarthy’s questions at the House of Representatives Un-American Activities Committee hearings. Blacklisted in Hollywood, Trumbo assumed the name Robert Rich, winning an Academy Award in 1956 for Best Motion Picture Story for The Brave One. In 1960, Trumbo reemerged, writing the screenplay to Exodus under his given name.

  The band was fascinated with Trumbo and the ostracism he suffered at the hands of anti-Communist zealots. They may have seen him as a kindred spirit because as a thrash metal band, they often felt on the outside of the mainstream music industry. Checking out his work, they found a dogeared copy of Trumbo’s 1939 novel Johnny Got His Gun, the story of Joe Bonham who goes off to war only to come home severely disabled. Written two years before the United States entered World War II, the novel’s message was popular in the left-wing antiwar movement. By 1941, the tide had changed. The US was embroiled in the war, and the book, viewed as dangerous propaganda, was pulled from distribution. Johnny Got His Gun resurfaced in the late sixties, selling thousands of copies to young men about to be shipped off to Vietnam.

  Using the book as a starting point, the band crafted a song about a man who, as Ulrich put it, comes back from war as a “living brain type of thing.” Drawn in horrific detail, a graphic video — the band’s first — accentuated the sorrowful inhumanity of the protagonist’s plight. Shot in black and white, the clip intercuts shots of the band with footage from Trumbo’s own 1971 film adaptation of Johnny Got His Gu
n (starring Timothy Bottoms). Metallica’s management had to track down one of the two existing prints of the motion picture from an Italian distribution company. The print was in terrible shape, but director Michael Salomon was cleverly able to cut and paste enough of the film stock to create an effective video. Relying heavily on sound bites from the film, Salomon dubbed Bottoms’s dialogue into the song to tell the tale of Joe Bonham. Unlike most rock videos, “One” was an entirely realized mini film, telling a complete story from start to finish. Debuting on MTV’s Headbanger’s Ball in January 1989, the video quickly rose to Number One on the station’s Top Fifteen countdown.

  “One” won Metallica a Grammy nomination in 1989 in the newly minted Best Metal Performance, Vocal or Instrumental. The previous year, they suffered an embarrassing defeat to irrelevant sixties’ rockers Jethro Tull in the Hard Rock/Heavy Metal category. But according to the LA Times, they still managed to shake “the Shrine Auditorium chandelier with a performance unlike anything ever seen or heard on a Grammy show.” They reigned victorious in 1989, having brought metal music to the Top Forty (Number Thirty-Five) and taking home the Grammy. Commenting on Metallica’s performance at the Grammy’s, Ulrich seemed gladdened that his band had finally broken into the mainstream. He told the Washington Post, “We didn’t come out and perform satanic rituals on stage or rape girls, and from our point of view, [‘One’] was a good song.”

  Smells Like Teen Spirit

  Nirvana

  When Nirvana was in the studio recording “Smells Like Teen Spirit,” the band didn’t think the song was anything remarkable. Producer Butch Vig, however, knew straightaway it would be a monster hit. He later told a reporter, “It was just blowing me away. I was jumping around the room.” A savage guitar-pop tune, “Teen Spirit,” with its classic us-versus-them theme, came along at a time when the alienated youth of America were looking for a new bellwether. The single’s release turned Nirvana leader Kurt Cobain into a pop star and cultural icon — a true grunge godhead.

  Much has been written about this song, but it is Cobain’s lyrics that drew the most notice. “Smells Like Teen Spirit” was greeted as the roar of rebellion, a rallying cry to angry disaffected kids. Actually, the phrase’s origins are humbler than initially thought. Long before Nirvana signed to Geffen Records, Cobain was living in Olympia, Washington, a suburb of Seattle. One night, he and his friend Kathleen Hannah (of the Riot Grrrl group Bikini Kill) decided to go out and literally paint the town. Armed with spray cans, they vandalized several buildings with their favorite tag lines — the inflammatory “God Is Gay” or the nonsensical “Amputate Acrobats.” Finishing off, they defaced a pickup truck with the fluorescent slur “Queer” before returning to Cobain’s home on North Pear Street. While Cobain watched, Hannah wrote the slogan “Kurt Smells Like Teen Spirit” in large sloppy letters on his apartment wall. Cobain was flattered, thinking the graffiti was a tribute — an evocative statement of his youthful rebellious spirit. Actually, it was a joke. The “Teen Spirit” Hannah actually had in mind was an antiperspirant for young women. It wasn’t until the song was riding high on the charts that Cobain learned an underarm deodorant had provided the inspiration for the tune.

  The song’s most famous line, “Here we are now, entertain us,” was dissected by music writers as a cynical line about youths’ diminished expectations in the aftermath of the Reagan/Bush golden years. In fact, it was a favorite Cobain party trick. To break the ice at social gatherings, he would often say to the hosts, “You invited us here, now entertain us.”

  Musically, rock critics often cite the debt “Teen Spirit” owed the 1976 Boston hit “More Than a Feeling.” The chord changes are analogous, a debt Cobain gladly acknowledged. “ ‘Teen Spirit’ was such a clichéd riff,” he told Rolling Stone writer David Fricke in an interview published in January 1994. “It was close to a Boston riff or ‘Louie Louie.’ ” Structurally, the tune, with its soft and quiet then loud and hard dynamic, was a blatant rip-off of Cobain’s heroes The Pixies.

  The immense success of “Smells Like Teen Spirit” and the subsequent platinum status of the album Nevermind was an anathema for Cobain. In interviews, he said he was embarrassed by the record’s glossy radio-ready production, telling Michael Azzerrad, in the biography Come As You Are, that Nevermind was “closer to a Motley Crüe record than a punk-rock record.” Playing the role of antistar to the hilt during Nirvana’s 1993 fall tour, Cobain often omitted “Smells Like Teen Spirit,” the band’s biggest hit, from set lists.

  A rare smile from Nirvana leader Kurt Cobain. The late guitarist was moved to write Nirvana’s biggest hit “Smells Like Teen Spirit” after a spray-painting spree in Olympia, Washington.

  Jeremy

  Pearl Jam

  Rising from the ashes of Green River and Mother Love Bone, two seminal grunge bands, Pearl Jam made a splash in 1991 with the release of the multiplatinum Ten. The album (kept out of the top spot on the charts by Billy Ray Cyrus) turned them into superstars and made a troubled kid from Richardson, Texas a household name. “Jeremy” hit the Top Five on alternative rock charts all over North America in 1991.

  Eddie Vedder was working as a hotel security guard in San Diego when he received a tape from a new Seattle band looking for a vocalist. He had performed with several bands, but things never seemed to work out. He quit Bad Radio because the members didn’t take the music seriously enough. Sometimes his shyness got the best of him. Once, he even wore goggles with the lenses blacked out so he wouldn’t have to look at the audience. However, life as a security guard didn’t appeal to him much, so he decided to give music another crack.

  The tape was sent by Stone Gossard and Jeff Ament, former guitarist and bassist, respectively, with Green River and Mother Love Bone. They were auditioning vocalists after Andrew Wood, their last singer, died of a heroin overdose. The cassette contained three instrumental guitar tracks which Gossard hoped Vedder could put lyrics to. After listening to the tape, Vedder fashioned a mini rock opera, a trio of songs that he insists are not autobiographical in any way. In the first movement, “Alive,” a mother is drawn sexually to her son because he reminds her of her dead husband. The story continues in “Once” where the son is so traumatized by the experience that he becomes a serial killer. “Footsteps” closes the trilogy when the son is captured and executed. Vedder recorded the vocals in his home studio and mailed them to Seattle.

  Gossard and Ament were blown away by Vedder’s tape. The combination of intense vocals with strong lyrics was just what they were after. Vedder was invited to join the band to rehearse and write more songs. Upon arrival in Seattle, Vedder was given more tapes and the writing began in earnest.

  The product of a troubled childhood, Vedder identified with alienated youth and found fodder for his songs in the stories of angry teens. A newspaper story from Richardson, Texas provided the inspiration for a song that would become the centerpiece of Pearl Jam’s debut Ten.

  Eddie Vedder plays it up for the crowd at a 1996 concert. The album Ten turned Pearl Jam into superstars, and made a troubled kid from Richardson, Texas a household name.

  On January 8, 1991, Vedder read the story of Jeremy Wade Delle, a Richardson High School sophomore. Rebuffed by a teacher for missing a class, Delle was sent to the principal’s office to get an admittance slip. He returned instead with a .357 Magnum. “Miss, I got what I really went for,” the shy teenager said before placing the barrel of the gun in his mouth and pulling the trigger in front of a class of thirty.

  Sixteen-year-old Brian Jackson was standing outside the classroom when he heard the bang. The sound, he said, was “like someone had just slammed a book on a desk.” “I thought they were doing a play or something,” he continued. “But then I heard a scream, and a blond girl came running out of the classroom, and she was crying.” Wondering what had happened, he went in and saw Jeremy dead on the floor. “The teacher was standing against the wall, crying and shaking,” he reported. “Some people were standing around her, h
olding her as if to keep her from falling.”

  Like Vedder, Delle was from a broken family and was described by classmates as a loner. Vedder identified with Jeremy, having spent many hours wondering whether life was worth living. But the story made him angry as well. Vedder often said he would be dead by now if it had not been for music, and he thought about all the good experiences he would have missed. Maybe if Jeremy had something to fall back on as Vedder had, this tragedy could have been avoided.

  With Delle’s story churning in his head, Vedder composed a song about a daddy who didn’t give affection and a boy who finally spoke in class. When it came time to record “Jeremy,” Vedder sang as though his life depended on it — and maybe it did. “If it wasn’t for music,” Vedder said at the MTV Video Awards in 1992, “I would have shot myself in front of that classroom.”

  “Jeremy” was Pearl Jam’s first Top Ten single.

  Rhythm of My Heart

  Rod Stewart

  Rod Stewart is a great interpreter of other people’s songs. With the right material, Stewart’s voice can really soar. In 1991, he found a tune that matched his style perfectly. Written by Canadian Marc Jordan, “Rhythm of My Heart” hit the Top Five.

  The story of “Rhythm of My Heart” starts years before the song was actually written, when Jordan was a young boy. “My dad was a classically trained light opera singer,” said Jordan, “but he sang everything. He sang jazz, big-band stuff, musical theater and folk songs. All sorts of things.