Who Wrote the Book of Love?

by Richard Crouse

  “He loved Irish, Scottish and Maritime folk songs. He loved that music and collected it. I heard it growing up as a child — all these wonderful Maritime folk songs that were really very much like the Irish and Scottish folk songs of the settlers. That music was in me when I grew up, and I think it had a big part in the fact that I could write ‘Rhythm of My Heart’ because it is really based on one of those Celtic melodies I heard as a child. Not a specific melody, just an amalgam of all the songs that I heard and the rhythms and melodies. The song came very quickly. It wasn’t hard to write because it all made sense.”

  At the time he wrote the song, Jordan was living in Los Angeles, having moved south from his native Toronto. “I started out as a recording artist,” he said. “I got my first deal in Los Angeles while I was living in Toronto. I did a couple of records for Warner Brothers with the Steely Dan people. I moved to Los Angeles after I lost my recording contract, and I needed money to keep myself alive. It was the writing that kept me going.”

  The year was 1983 and Jordan was barely making ends meet as a performer, although he had a publishing deal at Warner Chapell Music, penning tunes for Diana Ross, Kansas and Kim Carnes. Once “Rhythm of My Heart” was written, Jordan needed to make a demo of the song — a necessary step in selling the tune. “We did a demo of it in the Lawrence Welk Publishing Offices Studio in Hollywood,” he said. “I phoned the [musician’s] union and got a bagpipe player who showed up in a kilt, and he blew his brains out. It was four in the morning when we finally got a [bagpipe] part we could use. That song was finished early in the morning — about six or seven o’clock. The engineer actually left, it was such a late session.”

  Singer-songwriter Marc Jordan drew on his father’s record collection as inspiration for the Celtic-flavored “Rhythm of My Heart.” “He loved Irish, Scottish and Maritime folk songs,” said Jordan.

  The demo was mixed and submitted to Warner Chapell who sent it to Rob Dickens, then head of Warner Publishing. Dickens loved the song but was unable to place it with a major recording artist at the time. However, the tune was picked up by a Dutch Elvis impersonator who released it as a single in 1984.

  Years later, Dickens was put in charge of revitalizing Rod Stewart’s career. “He was the guy who found ‘Downtown Train’ for Rod and a few of the hits he had in the early nineties,” continued Jordan. “He remembered [‘Rhythm of My Heart’] for about six or seven years, and when he was looking for a Rod Stewart single, he pulled it out and played it for Rod. Rod said, ‘I can do it,’ and boom.”

  Stewart loved the Celtic feel of the tune, stamping what Q Magazine called his patented raspy “tartan-scarf-wearing treatment” on Jordan’s lyric. The up-tempo ballad seemed radio ready, but at the last minute, there was a snag. “It’s an interesting thing; [‘Rhythm of My Heart’] is an antiwar song about a man who goes away to war, or to some kind of struggle, and wonders if love has been a casualty of the war,” Jordan elaborated. “Then he comes home, and he realizes, no, when men go away to war, they may be altered, but things remain intact. The strange thing was that about a week before the single was to come out in London, the BBC said, ‘We won’t play this unless you remove any reference to war.’ [England was] in the Gulf War at the time.

  “It was a huge dilemma for me. [Producer] Trevor Horn was calling. Everybody was calling, wanting me to change the lyrics. I actually took a shot at it. I couldn’t really make it happen, and then the war ended in three days. It was a short war! I dodged a bullet there.”

  Released in early 1991, the single tore up the charts, revitalizing Stewart’s career. It was his biggest hit since 1989’s “Downtown Train” — reaching Number Five in the United States and topping the charts in many other countries. “You just watch it,” said Jordan, “almost like a horse race. You try to guess where it is going to go. I thought it would only go to the mid-thirties, but it kept going and going and going. What I also found out was that it was a hit in almost every country in the world. I didn’t actually realize what a huge international star Rod was.”

  You can go anywhere in the mail. In May 1997, in a case of life imitating art, a twenty-six-year-old man mailed himself in a large wooden crate to a friend who lived one hundred miles away. Scott Harner made his unusual travel plans after hearing the story of Walso and his long-distance love Marcia in “The Gift,” a Velvet Underground song. How much does it cost to mail yourself? Postage due was $180 for the four-hundred-pound package.

  Tears in Heaven

  Eric Clapton

  In the days immediately following his son’s death, Eric Clapton turned to his guitar for solace. Sequestered in his home in England, he tried to find a way to wash away the hurt of this latest tragedy. Years before, he had written “Layla” under similar emotional distress. In those painful, lonely hours, he composed “Tears in Heaven,” a requiem for his son.

  March 19, 1991 was an exciting day for four-and-a-half-year-old Conor. His dad, Eric Clapton, took him to the Ringling Circus in New York City. There, wide-eyed in amazement, he saw acrobats and trapeze artists live for the first time. After the show, Clapton dropped Conor at the apartment of his mother, Lori Del Santos, in the swanky Galleria Building on East 57th Street, before returning to his hotel uptown. It had been a great day for father and son. Clapton had just come off several years of intense work and had been unable to spend time with the young boy. He feared he would become an absentee father, just as his father had been. It was his plan to take the next year off to try to get to know his son.

  The next day, a housekeeper opened a window to air out a bedroom. The little boy, still dressed in his pajamas, climbed out on the ledge of the window while his mother was out running errands. Possibly trying to emulate the tightrope walkers he had seen the previous night, he lost his balance and fell 750 feet to the roof of an adjacent building.

  Eric Clapton arrived at the scene minutes after the accident. The paramedics, police and ambulance were already there, trying to save Conor’s life but to no avail. He was pronounced dead on the scene and was buried eight days later. George Harrison and Phil Collins attended the funeral, while Keith Richards, John Mayall and Prince Charles sent sympathy notes.

  The tragedy was compounded by newspaper reports that tried to lay the blame on Eric Clapton. The condominium had not been equipped with protective window guards, a mandatory feature in all New York State apartments housing children under the age of twelve. One newspaper claimed Clapton would be brought up on charges relating to the absence of window guards, although one city hall official told the press, “It is highly unlikely we would want to capitalize on a tragedy such as this.”

  Clapton withdrew from public life in the months following Conor’s death. Trying to put his life back together, he attended AA meetings and went into therapy. He kept a typically English stiff upper lip but wondered if he was suffering enough. “[I had] to go into analysis to sort that bit out,” he said later. “… from the way I was raised and being English … we pretend we’re okay, and we take care of business,” he told Rolling Stone’s James Henke. “But inside, it’s a different story.” The greatest healing tool, however, turned out to be his oldest friend — his guitar. In the early summer of 1991, Clapton accepted a commission to write a score for Rush, a film adaptation of Kim Wozencraft’s novel about a narcotics agent who becomes addicted to drugs. The guitarist recorded fifteen of the tunes he had written during his self-imposed exile, including “Tears in Heaven.”

  Songwriters always have their ears attuned for catchy phrases – even in times of confusion. In a scene reminiscent of Kids Say the Darndest Things, Neil Finn, tune-smith for the now-defunct Crowded House, wrote “Pineapple Head” (an album track from Together Alone). “It started with my son Liam who had a fever. He was delirious, and I was standing by with a cloth to cool him down, and he just started talking about all these things,” Finn said in Mojo, reported by David Hepworth in 1994. “ ‘Pineapple Head! Pineapple Head!’ Then he said ‘detective is flat’ and �
��getaway car.’ ” So, instead of staying there and doing what a father should do, I ran downstairs and committed it to a song. Until my wife Sharon came in and looked at me in horror and said, ‘What are you doing down here?’ ” Finn also credits Liam with writing the line “here comes Mrs. Hairy Legs” in the Crowded House hit “Chocolate Cake.”

  Released in early 1992, the popularity of “Tears in Heaven” eclipsed the film, generating thousands of newspaper column inches from critics eager to discuss Clapton’s tender, understated tune. Undertaker Richard Putt reported in the press that “Tears in Heaven” was the most-requested song at funerals that year. Critical response was mostly positive, although one former colleague questioned Clapton’s motives for releasing the tune so soon after Conor’s death. Writing and recording it was logical, the friend said, but “releasing it as a single was self-indulgent beyond belief.”

  Clapton answered this harsh criticism with typical grace and eloquence. “My audience would be very surprised if I didn’t make some reference to [Conor’s death]. I didn’t want to insult them by not including them in my grief.” In another interview, he praised the opportunity that Rush provided him to express his feelings through “Tears in Heaven” and have it “come out while there was still an audience for it.”

  Potentially the song’s toughest critic, Lori Del Santos was moved by “Tears in Heaven.” “The sound of Eric’s voice, the music — it made me weep,” she told CBS News of the tune which she heard for the first time in a shopping mall. “I know [Eric] is saying those words in “Tears in Heaven” because he is worried that they didn’t spend enough time together.… Eric is frightened that if he met Conor in heaven, our son might not recognize him.”

  The sentiment of the song endeared Clapton not only to the public, but to the music industry as well. In 1992, he received an MTV Award for “Tears in Heaven” and was honored as an outstanding recording artist by the Royal Variety Club. That year at the Grammy’s, host Gary Shandling quipped, “If you’re up against Eric Clapton in any categories, I’d go home now.”

  “I don’t think I deserve this,” he told the audience. “There were better songs.” Later, after his sixth trip to the stage, he made a heartrending speech. “I feel incredibly guilty. I don’t know why I feel so guilty about taking so many of these. I don’t know what to say. I’m very moved and very shaky and very emotional. I want to thank a lot of people, but the one person I want to thank is my son for the love he gave me and the song he gave me. I have received a great honor, but I’ve lost the one thing I truly loved.”

  Clapton had nine nominations, and he left the Shrine Auditorium that February night clutching six statues, including an award for “Tears in Heaven.”

  Eric Clapton coaxes notes from his guitar at a 1995 concert. In times of turmoil, Clapton often turned to his guitar for solace. In the days immediately following Conor Clapton’s tragic death, the elder Clapton dealt with his pain the best way he knew how – by writing a requiem for his son.

  Under the Bridge

  Red Hot Chili Peppers

  A song written as an exorcism of inner demons, lamenting the death of a dear friend, was never meant to be released. Anthony Kiedis had penned the song as an entry in a song diary. He certainly didn’t think “Under the Bridge” would hit Number One.

  Fairfax High in Los Angeles could rightly lay claim to the title “the rock-and-roll school.” Phil Spector, Herb Alpert, Jerry Leiber and Guns and Roses’ guitarist Slash all learned about readin’, writin’ and ’rithmetic here. Nirvana shot their famous “Smells Like Teen Spirit” video in the Fairfax gymnasium. As the seventies became the eighties, a trio of teenage boys would meet here, finding celebrity as the Red Hot Chili Peppers. Hillel Slovak and Michael “Flea” Balzary had a band called Anthym, a jive-funk outfit whose music presaged the punk-funk sound of the Chili Peppers. After graduation, Kiedis hooked up with his high-school friends as the band’s emcee.

  “Their parents call them crazy, and the girls call them all the time,” he would squawk from the stage. “But I call them like I see them, and I call them … Anthym!”

  Anthym split before committing anything to tape, with Flea departing to slap the bass for punk legends Fear and Slovak teaming up with What Is This? The three remained friends, with Slovak and Kiedis becoming particularly close. Initially bonding over their love of music, they soon discovered a mutual magnetism to the dark side of life in Los Angeles. Entire days were erased from their memories as they mixed dangerous quantities of LSD, cocaine and heroin. The pair would stray to perilous parts of LA to score, frequently buying from gang members under a bridge in a particularly seedy part of the city.

  In 1983, the three funkateers started a new band — Tony Flow and the Miraculously Majestic Masters of Mayhem. After one gig, the group agreed that the cumbersome name had to go. Redubbed the Red Hot Chili Peppers, they tore up every room they played in, often performing in the nude. Soon they were offered a speculative recording deal with EMI America.

  Unfortunately, as Slovak and Flea were signed to other record deals, they had to be replaced on the band’s 1984 eponymously titled debut. The guys continued to play live and regrouped to record 1985’s acclaimed Freaky Styley long player.

  Meanwhile, drug use was rampant in the band. Slovak indulged to an alarming degree. On tour, he courted drug dealers in every city, scoring at each stop. In 1988, his heavy use took its toll. He walked out on the band during their European tour, unable to play. The good times came to an abrupt end on Sunday June 26, 1988. The guitarist overdosed, slipping into a coma before dying alone in his apartment.

  Kiedis was desolate. Not only had he lost his best friend, but, as he was still using, he had to reexamine his life. He decided to get clean. Isolation from the lure of Los Angeles was the only way to kick his habit. After Slovak’s memorial service, Kiedis packed a bag and headed to Mexico. For one month he lived in a modest fishing village, living in a hut on the beach, drying out.

  While Kiedis was away, drummer Jack Irons decided to leave the band, blaming the music industry for what had happened to Slovak. When Kiedis returned, he found his band in bedlam. “The death of Hillel changed our entire attitude,” he said later of that time. “Losing your best friend at the age of twenty-six is a mind- and soul-blower. But there was definitely an inspiration which came from Hillel dying which helped sharpen the focus of the band. Flea and I were left with each other, and we decided, ‘Here’s something we started a long time ago that we haven’t finished.’ ”

  Recruiting new members guitarist John Frusciante (whose audition for the band included showing his erect penis) and Chad Smith (drums), the reborn Red Hots recorded Mother’s Milk. Its heart-stopping single “Knock Me Down” was dedicated to their dead colleague.

  Kiedis was still healing. Feeling the loss of his friend profoundly, he longed to reestablish contact with his family and old friends. He wanted his predrug life back. Feeling isolated, he sometimes felt as if Los Angeles, his home for the last fifteen years, was his only constant companion.

  Driving in his car one afternoon with these thoughts swirling through his head, he began to sob. His mind wandered to his old friend Alain Johannes who often flippantly remarked about guardian angels. He saw them everywhere — in the Hollywood Hills, at his home, in crowds. They looked out for him, he said, “more than any human being in the world.” Kiedis thought he must have a guardian angel. Otherwise, he would be dead too, just like Hillel.

  Alone in his car, he sang, “Sometimes I feel like I don’t have a partner …” Arriving home, he couldn’t shake his strange mood. He realized that no matter how low he sunk, he was still in better shape than he was as a drug addict. Needing a release for these feelings, he sat down and put pen to paper. Expanding on the theme established in his car, he wrote a soul-searching song about the bridge where he used to buy drugs and the things that went on beneath that bridge. Once finished, he thought the lyrics were too sentimental, too sad for the Red Hots, and he didn�
��t even bother to show them to the band.

  Enter Rick Rubin, a hot New York producer with an eclectic list of credits on his résumé — from rappers Public Enemy to thrash-metal rockers Danzig. He was the perfect choice to helm the Red Hot Chili Peppers’ next album, BloodSugarSexMagik. Leafing through Kiedis’s notebook, “Under the Bridge” caught his eye.

  Kiedis hadn’t even considered including the song. It was almost folkie sounding, and he figured Rubin would hate it. The producer insisted on hearing it, urging the singer to sing it on the spot. Kiedis gave him an a cappella version. Rubin loved it and convinced Kiedis to present it to the band. The band agreed it should be on the record.

  Recording commenced in Lauren Canyon in an abandoned hacienda once owned by Rudolph Valentino. Built in 1917, it was also rumored that the Beatles once dropped acid there on a visit to the United States. The band recorded live off the floor, producing the best material of their career. “Give It Away,” a frenzied speed rap, would later win a 1992 Grammy as Best Hard-Rock Song. Even more popular was “Under the Bridge,” a song which even the band admitted didn’t have much of a hook but revealed a level of songwriting maturity missing from their other records. It was the band’s first ballad. Its stripped down production — little more than sparse guitar and Kiedis’s vocal — recalled Jimi Hendrix’s gentle “Little Wing.” Rolling Stone scribe David Fricke praised “Under the Bridge,” saying it is “light on radio-friendly pomp and direct in its confessional detail.” He went on to describe the tune as “a nervy slice of melodrama that is streets away from mosh-ville” and the locker-room chuckles the band was known for.

  As for the actual location of the bridge, Keidis is not saying. “It’s downtown,” he told David Fricke. “But it’s unimportant. I don’t want people looking for it.”