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***A new series designed to pay tribute to some of my all time favorite songs***
Burt Bacharach was nearing the end of an astonishing decade of writing some of the greatest songs of the twentieth century when his haunting "This Guy's In Love with You" first appeared in 1968. Featuring lyrics by the incomparable Hal David, "This Guy's In Love with You" first came into prominence when A&M founder and popular band leader Herb Alpert recorded a version for a television special.
Bacharach biographer Serene Dominic notes though in his extraordinary Song By Song that the song was probably written for Dusty Springfield as "This Girl's In Love with You". Dusty's lovely original version appeared on her great Dusty Definitely (a title that will come into play a bit later) but it was Alpert who scored the first hit with it.
Lyrically striking and yet deceptively simple, "This Guy's in Love with You" is one of Bacharach's most remarkably versatile songs and it has been adapted as everything from a syrupy ballad to an stone cold soul classic to a free jazz workout. Shortly after Alpert's striking version became a smash hit, it seemed that nearly everyone was having a go at it, including Dionne Warwick who scored a top ten hit with it in 69.
Covered hundreds of times by artists all over the world, the song has somehow never outstayed its welcome and it remains as fresh and as powerful as the day that Bacharach first sketched it out in the mid sixties. One of the song's biggest fans is powerhouse songwriter Noel Gallagher, who has gone on record as calling it "the greatest love song ever written." Perhaps even more to the point, the first Oasis album's title Definitely Maybe harkens directly back to that original Dusty Springfield album that the song was first written for. Gallagher would get the chance to perform the song with Bacharach himself in the mid nineties and it has since become a staple of his solo acoustic sets.
Gallagher, who placed a photo of Bacharach in plain view on the cover of that 1st Oasis album, has never shied away from his love for the iconic songwriter and Oasis' gorgeous "Half a World Away" owes not just a little to "The Guy's in Love with You."
My personal favorite versions of the song are sadly not available on YouTube. Petula Clark recorded a soaring version that just melts me every time I hear it and the always undervalued BJ Thomas delivered a stunning take on one of his sadly out of print late sixties LPs. A couple of key versions thankfully preserved on YouTube are two soul versions courtesy of Aretha Franklin and Jimmy Ruffin:
A terrific live Jazz version by Ella Fitzgerald has to be highlighted as well:
As does this eerie and near whispered Johnny Mathis take:
Finally, for a little international flavor, here is German artist Hildegard Knef delivering her version of this song:
Picking a favorite Burt Bacharach song is a bit impossible as there are just so many masterpieces to choose from but "This Guy's in Love with You" would place near the top of my list.
Its remarkable staying power and the fact that it has been recorded by such a diverse group of singers in a number of incredibly different styles makes it an ideal first choice for this new series.
While it perhaps doesn't compare to the more confrontational and mature Mick Jagger and Keith Richards compositions from The Rolling Stones catalogue of the late sixties and early seventies, there has always been something special about the haunting and surprisingly tender first composition from the legendary Glimmer Twins, 1964's "As Tears Go By". Reports vary from person to person as to the true origins of "As Tears Go By", but all seem to agree that it came about from manager Andrew Loog Oldham's demand that Jagger and Richards start writing songs together to compete with John Lennon and Paul McCartney, who had suddenly turned Rock n Roll into a songwriter's field with their work with The Beatles. "As Tears Go By" would be one of the earliest songs, perhaps even the first, from the famed duo of Jagger and Richards and it still resonates today as one of their most enduring compositions.
Richard's offers up probably the most iconic story as to how the song came about in the essential According to The Rolling Stones. The legendary guitar player recalls, "The 1st one we worked on was "As Tears Go By". That was the song where Andrew locked us in the kitchen in my flat up on Mapesbury Road in Willesden. He said, 'You’ve got to try'. He put a guitar in the kitchen and locked the door and we stayed there all night." Richard's story is the commonly accepted one but it might very well be one of the great Rock myths. Jagger remembers differently in the same book and says, "Keith likes the story about the kitchen, God bless him. I think Andrew might have said something at some point along the lines of 'I should lock you in a room until you've written a song' and in that way mentally he did lock us in a room, but he didn't literally lock us in."
Regardless of whether the locked room story is fact or fiction, the song that Jagger and Richards came up with as their debut as songwriters is a beauty. Originally called "As Time Goes By", which Oldham changed to 'tears' (snagging a co-writing credit in the process), the song's lyrically famous opening beginning with the rather odd, "It is the evening of the day" signaled a songwriting team destined to not play by the rules and who would follow nobody's lead but their own. Oldham planned to debut the song as a Rolling Stones b-side but he quickly changed his mind and decided the song would be perfect for a seventeen year old singer who had recently come under his wing named Marianne.
It's arguable as to whether "As Tears Go By" would be known at all today as anything other than an early Rolling Stones track had Marianne Faithfull not recorded it in 1964. Her version, a worldwide hit in the fall of 64, made the song an instant classic and announced her as one of the most distinctive and memorable vocalists of the sixties. Faithfull recalled in her autobiography the first time she heard the song that would change her life, "Andrew played me a demo of the tune with Mick singing and Big Jim Sullivan on acoustic guitar. He handed me a scrawled lyric sheet and I went back into the studio and did it." Faithfull's sublimely sweet and strikingly sincere version hit the British top ten soon after and by November of 64 it was in America's top forty and Marianne Faithfull became one of the first major female stars of the British Invasion.
Faithfull perceptively points out that the song is "like a Francoise Hardy song", while Charlie Watts would take it even further, comparing it to the stuff the band Pentangle would be doing a few years down the road and saying it had, "an early English style" and that it was "the beginning of flower power." There is something to what both of them said as Faithfull's version does indeed sound at least a couple of years ahead of its time. It perhaps would have been an even bigger hit had it been released in say 66 rather than 64.
Neither Jagger nor Richards seemed too concerned about Oldham giving Faithful the song. Keith admitted to being perfectly pleased that the song was such a hit for the "ex-nun" and that even though they considered some of their early material rather, "purile and (like) Kindergarten" that they impressively always managed to, "made a decent showing in the charts."
The Stones finally released their own version in 1965 as a B-Side to the incredible "19th Nervous Breakdown". Their original version has not had the resonance that Faithfull's original has, although The Stones version actually performed better that Faithfull's had on the American charts.
"As Tears Go By" would become one of the most recorded Rolling Stones songs of the sixties and within a couple of years from Faithfull's version everyone from Nancy Sinatra (whose subtle and hushed reading of the song on her debut album is one of the definitive cuts of it) to talented Brazilian Bossa Nova singer Nara Leao had released a version.
"As Tears Go By" has been Recorded hundreds of times since Marianne Faithfull's original version, with some of the key covers of it coming from artists ranging from The Primitives to French icon Vanessa Paradis:
The song would turn out to be one Johnny Thunder's favorites and he recorded a number of beautifully bruised versions of it. The doomed and brilliant Thunders continued to perform the song up until his untimely death in the early nineties.
The song also had a surprising effect on two cinematic legends, Jean-Luc Godard and Wong Kar-Wai. Kar-Wai's breakout film from 1988 took its title from the song (and portions of it can be heard on the soundtrack) while Godard went so far as to cast Marianne Faithfull herself in his amazing Made in U.S.A. in 1966, where she can be seen singing the song to Anna Karina.
Faithfull has continued to perform what has become her signature tune, even though she admitted in her book that originally, "I was never that crazy about As Tears Go By" but time has changed her opinion of it, as she now realizes how "astonishing" it was "for a boy of twenty to have written" such a knowing song about a "woman looking back nostalgically on her life."
Among the most noteable performances of the song are when Marianne appeared on David Bowie's mythic 1980 Floor Show in the mid seventies singing it, and another came at a memorial for Linda McCartney where she took the stage with Smith's legend Johnny Marr.
The Rolling Stones all but abandoned the song for quite awhile but began performing it again in 2006 to the delight of fans all over the world. This rather extraordinary clip from that tour showcases not only the song but also celebrates the two extraordinary artists who wrote it nearly fifty years ago...
Originally written for soul great Otis Redding, who was tragically killed in a plane crash before recording it, at the request of their ambitious manager Robert Stigwood, “To Love Somebody” is one of the great songs of the sixties and one of the most important tracks the legendary Bee Gees ever delivered.
With the hopes of Redding recording it destroyed, Barry, Robin and Maurice Gibb recorded the Barry and Robin penned track themselves in 1967 for their historic third LP, Bee Gees 1st. The song, one of the album’s most majestic, would become The Bee Gees second single taken from the influential LP and would turn out to be a solid if not massive hit. Peaking just inside the Top Twenty in The United States and barely scratching the Top Forty in Britain, the song’s impact didn't begin to really be felt until 1969 when both Nina Simone and Janis Joplin recorded stunning versions of it.
Barry Gibb, recalling the writing of the magnificent track in the liner notes Rhino’s great 2006 reissue of Bee Gees’ 1st, stated “I wrote that in New York, and I think the last verse I finished with Robin in London after that". Barry also noted that he had in fact met Otis Redding the night the song was written, and it was that meeting that gave Stigwood the notion of the Bee Gees giving the song to the legendary soul Stax soul singer.
Covered literally hundreds of times by artists ranging from Rod Stewart to The Flying Burrito Brothers to Damien Rice (seen above) to Billy Corgan of The Smashing Pumpkins (seen below), "To Love Somebody" is one of the earliest examples of The Bee Gees absolute mastery of their songwriting craft. Working as both a soaring love song and a devastating lament for a lost love, "To Love Somebody" remains one of the Bee Gees most powerful compositions, and acts as one of the earliest chapters in what was soon to become one of the most successful and legendary songwriting teams in all of popular music.
While the Bee Gees original studio-take is a work of perfection, it can be argued that a couple of the later cover versions are even more accomplished. Nina Simone’s bruising and beautiful take from 69 especially adds further dimensions to the song, as does Joplin’s searing version of the song from the same year. Favorite version arguments aside, "To Love Somebody" is at the end of the day one of the essential Bee Gees songs.
While history often attempts to push the band into a separate corner from their peers, the wide ranging artists that have covered "To Love Somebody" show the Bee Gees as being very much at the head of the vanguard of the greatest sixties rock musicians. The fact that their own recordings remain so immaculate and individualistic make them all the more transcendent, important and inspiring.
While the title track “Imagine” is undoubtedly the most famous song off Lennon’s masterful 1971 LP, it is the haunting “Jealous Guy” that has become the most covered. Growing up with the legendary album, I must admit that “Jealous Guy” has always been my favorite, and as I have gotten older it has lost none of its hypnotic and powerful pull for me. Lennon originally wrote the tune for “Jealous Guy” after The Beatles returned from their visit to India as “Child of Nature”, a song that was left off The White Album.
The discarded song stayed in Lennon’s head throughout the next few years and he brought it back to life during the Imagine sessions with new typically ultra-personal lyrics focusing on his relationship with artist, collaborator and muse Yoko Ono.
“Jealous Guy” is one of the ultimate John Lennon songs as it shows so many aspects of his volatile and passionate personality. Beautiful sounding but with a real line of bitterness underneath, the song offers up an apology without a resolution. It’s as though Lennon is explaining a line of behavior he has no plans on changing. Despite the fact that the song includes Lennon’s own undeniably effective piano playing, the haunting harmonium work by John Barham, Jim Keltner on drums and the ever present Klaus Voorman on bass, the real pull of the track is Lennon’s pleading vocal take and an eerie mid-song whistle that would go on to influence Billy Joel a few years later on his equally mesmerizing "The Stranger" in 1977.
“Jealous Guy” wasn’t released as a single in Lennon’s lifetime (it finally appeared as a 45 under his own name in the mid eighties) but its impact was immediately felt. Of the dozens of cover versions of the song, one of the earliest by late soul legend Donny Hathaway remains the most effective:
Rod Stewart and The Faces began performing the song live in the mid seventies shortly before they split up, and the tune lent itself well to their scrappy but ferociously great playing, and is heard well in this rehearsal version:
The most successful version of the song (and truth be told, perhaps the greatest) was released by the peerless Roxy Music in 1980 shortly after Lennon had been killed outside The Dakota in New York. Armed with one of Bryan Ferry’s most enduring vocals and the band’s typically immaculate playing, Roxy Music’s version would ironically turn out to be their only number one hit in Britain, and it served simultaneously as a lament and tribute to an extraordinary talent taken all to soon.
Everyone from The Black Crows to Kiss have performed the song since. Much missed Elliot Smith was an unabashed fan of the track and his tender version would pop up often in his live shows throughout the nineties:
The most original version of the song came courtesy of Lou Reed at the Come Together tribute concert in 2001. Lou’s pulverizing and passionate version of Lennon’s track instantly became a ‘Lou Reed Song’ in the famed New Yorker’s hands and it’s a shame he hasn’t (to my knowledge) revisited it since.
Vivid, unflinching, and altogether haunting, "Jealous Guy" remains one of John Lennon's most beloved tracks and, along with the raging "Crippled Inside", it is the key song off his most commercially successful album.
Simultaneously erotic, lonely and altogether heartbreaking, Kris Kristofferson’s landmark “Help Me Make it Through the Night” has been recorded by hundreds of major artists ranging from Kris himself, to Johnny Cash, to Gladys Knight, to Elvis Presley. The legendary and influential singer song-writer wrote the song in a highly unusual place, as Kristofferson recalled in the essential book on Elvis Presley songwriters, "Writing for the King" with, “I wrote the song when I was still flying petroleum helicopters out in the Gulf of Mexico. I wrote it out there on one of those lonely oil rigs where we lived at for a week at a time. It was a good way to deal with the loneliness out there…” It is that loneliness that comes through the most in the song’s haunting lyrics of a man so desperate for a night of human contact that he is literally willing to ‘let the devil take tomorrow’ for it. Kris’ version first appeared on his seminal self-titled 1970 album that would alert the world to his considerable skills as an interpreter of his own material. "Help Me Make it Through the Night", ironically and controversially, first became a hit for a woman when country singer Sammi Smith recorded it for her album named after the song also in 1970. Smith’s version was a smash hit and landed at number one across the country charts and was seen as a major leap forward for many conservatively minded radio stations and listeners, as it helped correlate country music with the sexual revolution that was sweeping the country in the early seventies.
Kristofferson’s favorite version of the song was recorded shortly after Smith’s when Elvis Presley recorded a splendidly laid back and chillingly heartfelt take in 1971. Kris said of Elvis in "Writing For The King" that, “I found out that Elvis recorded it when I was on the road” and that even though “all my heroes were recording my stuff” that “To have Elvis record your song was amazing.” Kris recalled the first time he heard Elvis’ eerie take later with, “I was in Bob Beckham’s office at Combine Music in Nashville when I first heard Elvis’ version of "Help Me Make it Through the Night", We played it and it was just like being at church…the fact that it was Elvis singing your song was an honor…I like everything that Elvis did. I just liked his approach.” Not totally sure why Elvis picked the song, Kris finally decided that, “Certainly it’s a situation he could have identified with. I mean, 'Help me make it through the night', I’m sure he could have identified with that emotion.”
The song became one of the most recorded of the seventies and appealed to country, pop, soul and rock fans. It even appealed to director John Huston, who used it to great effect in his 1972 feature Fat City, a film in which Kris appeared. Some of the most notable version include this wonderful rendering by Gladys Knight and the Pips for the mid seventies:
And here is Johnny and June Cash singing the song famously as a duet:
Kris himself has continued to make the song a staple of his own live shows and this performance of it on the Old Grey Whistle Test with Rita Coolidge remains a particular favorite:
A humorous anecdote about the song came out recently courtesy of Criterion’s excellent Two Lane Blacktop set, on which director Monte Hellman interviews Kris. Kris recalled that during Bob Dylan’s recording session of his legendary Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid Soundtrack, a film in which Kris starred as The Kid, director Sam Peckinpah drunkenly interrupted it one night telling Dylan he wished he would stop what he was doing and lay down something like “Help Me Make it Through the Night.” Despite all of the versions, Kris seems to remain proudest of Presley’s and would say in Writing for the King that, “It’s one of the highlights for me to have had Elvis cut one of my songs…I would have never dreamed that Elvis would sing one of my songs (and) with so much soul. I feel a lot of gratitude for that.” Elvis would record two other Kris Kristofferon songs in the seventies, “For the Good Times” and “Why Me Lord” before his untimely death in 1977. The mind boggles at the kind of collaborative work the two could have done as songwriter and interpreter had things worked out differently.
Elvis Presley must have been elated on the evening February 19th, 1969. After all, a marathon all night session just two nights earlier had proven that his initial run at Memphis' American Sound Studios the month before hadn’t been a fluke. He would have had no way of knowing that he was in the midst of a period that would one day be considered one of the most important in rock history, now would he have realized how many artists would build an entire career off the resurgent energy those sessions produced. He wouldn’t have been thinking along those lines. Instead it is easy to imagine that Elvis Presley probably felt more grateful than anything else, as he had to know that he hadn’t delivered music this raw and powerful for vinyl since that session in 67 that produced his take on Jerry Reed’s "Guitar Man". That February evening would turn out to be one of the less productive song wise of Elvis’ entire run with producer Chips Moman at American Sound. While most of the sessions produced at least three master’s per evening, this one only managed two, but they were both stunners. In the late part of the evening into the early morning hours, Presley would deliver a devastating version of Jerry Butler’s “Only the Strong Survive”, a song that seemed to sum up his entire heroic stand at American Sound in 69. Elvis seemed even more passionate though about the song he spent hours on in the earlier part of the evening, a haunting and eerie tale about a wanderer looking for a long lost love on a rainy Kentucky day. Eddie Rabbitt was nearing thirty years old in 1969 and he must have been wondering when his big break was coming. The Brooklyn born artist had been building a solid reputation as one of Nashville’s top songwriters throughout the mid to late sixties, but he had yet to deliver a song that he could really build a career on. Northern Irish boy Rabbitt might have seemed an odd candidate for the Tennessee music scene, but since he was a young man he had seen a connection between America’s country music and the Irish music his father had played him as a youth. Rabbitt recalled in an interview that music and writing had always been a passion of his and that he “was 12 years old” when he penned his first song, a ballad entitled “Susie”. Rabbitt must have felt a long way from home in the mid-sixties as he struggled to get his words and music to quality artists. There was something special about the young and exceptionally good looking young writer though, and Chips Moman realized it and continually asked Rabbitt for material. Rabbitt’s big break came courtesy of controversial Presley co-conspirator Lamar Fike who heard a demo of Rabbit’s “Kentucky Rain” in the late part of 68. Rabbitt recalled after months of waiting the day that Fike called him up with the news that not only did Elvis want to record the track but that he wanted to, “put it out as his next A-Side single.” Rabbitt was stunned and said that it felt like, “even more than a dream” and that it made him finally feel like he, “was a songwriter after all.” In hindsight, had Eddie Rabbitt recorded “Kentucky Rain” himself it could have easily broken him as a solo recording star, but that was to come later and even Rabbitt knew that nothing he could have done could have matched the majesty of Presley’s impassioned take. Elvis, Chips and the legendary American Sound band began working on "Kentucky Rain" diligently just past 7:30 on that fateful February evening. Presley historian Ernst Jorgensen wrote in the book on Elvis’ sessions that "Kentucky Rain", “wasn’t an easy song for the musicians to grasp” and the recording ended up taking hours, “to arrive at a truly accomplished rendition-but that it was worth it.”
While the American Sound band and Moman might have found Rabbitt’s song tricky, Elvis fell right into its groove and all of his vocal takes that night were mesmerizing. Moman reportedly got so excited listening to Elvis’ vocals during each take that he got co-producer Felton Jarvis to act, “as a cheerleader” in efforts to, “spur (Presley) onward” throughout the night. Just over a year before, Presley had been stuck in Hollywood recording a song about a bull, so standing in American Studios that night singing such an adult and complex song as “Kentucky Rain” must have been a truly emotional experience for him. Of course, the story of “Kentucky Rain” doesn’t begin and end with Elvis Presley’s magical vocal take. The American Studio band was arguably the best in the world in 1969, and everything from Bobbie Wood’s piano work to the incomparable guitar playing of Reggie Young clicks dramatically in “Kentucky Rain”. It is one of the great American Studio recordings…a bruised, powerhouse and incredibly cinematic work that has lost none of its edge in the forty years since its release. The song was held back for single release and was not included on either of the masterful American Sound Studio albums. It would hit stores in January, 1970 with the infectious “My Little Friend” as it B-Side. Like the greatest of Elvis Presley’s recordings, “Kentucky Rain” blurred the lines between rock, pop and country and it made a significant dent on each chart. It landed squarely in Billboard’s top twenty soon after its release and it became one of the most played songs of the year, although in hindsight it should have placed higher. Elvis Presley loved “Kentucky Rain” and in 1970 he brought it to Vegas for some of his legendary stands at The International and The Hilton. Live recordings of the song show what it would have sounded like had Elvis produced the cut instead of Moman. The tempo is a bit faster and more space is left for Elvis’ unmatched TCB band to play with. The live versions of "Kentucky Rain" are perhaps even more powerful than the studio take, although they lose some of the ethereal quality of the original.
Elvis liked Eddie Rabbitt a lot and he recorded two more of the songwriter’s passionate and expert songs, the epic sounding "Inherit the Wind" and the rocking "Patch it Up". Both songs are masterworks in their own right, but neither matches the splendor of "Kentucky Rain". The song not only sealed Eddie Rabbitt’s name as a top songwriter, but it also helped springboard his own solo career. Throughout the seventies and eighties, Rabbitt proved to be one of the great cross-over artists and the albums he recorded in the period were remarkably well-crafted and well-performed works. Eddie would hit pay-dirt ten years after Elvis first recorded one of his songs with another tune about the rain, and the chart-topping “I Love a Rainy Night” remains one of the coolest sounding and most resonate cross-over country songs ever recorded.
“Kentucky Rain” has been covered numerous times since Elvis’ version. Eddie Rabbitt himself would tackle the song a year after Elvis passed away on his terrific 1978 album Variations. His version is heartfelt, gripping and compelling. It is a splendid tribute to both Rabbitt’s ability as a singer in his own right, and Presley himself. In the years since Elvis’ death, “Kentucky Rain” has appeared on dozen’s of best-of collections and box-sets. It became one of the most thrilling cuts on the near chart topping 2nd to None in the early part of the decade, and remains a favorite to many fans all over the world. One of those fans is peerless Paul Westerberg, who began performing “Kentucky Rain” live around the time of 2nd to None’s release. Westerberg’s love for Elvis has been apparent since The Replacements paid tribute to the cover of G.I. Blues with their legendary Pleased to Meet Me LP twenty years ago, and his version of “Kentucky Rain” is a ragged triumph…sloppy, genuine, and fitting as Paul Westerberg stands along with Elvis as one of Rock’s great individuals. Eddie Rabbitt and Elvis Presley would meet just once; backstage after a particularly frenzied Vegas stand in the early seventies. Rabbitt recalled that meeting an exhausted Elvis Presley was, “short and sweet but a pleasure nonetheless.” Eddie Rabbitt sadly followed Elvis Presley into the great unknown in the early summer of 1998. His legacy of great songwriting lives on though, with “Kentucky Rain” remaining one of his most devastating and powerful tunes…
***Quotes come from Writing for the King and A Life in Music.***
BLOG CREATED, EDITED and WRITTEN BY JEREMY RICHEY: Began in DEC 2006. The written content of all posts (excepting quotes from reviews, books, other publications) COPYRIGHT JEREMY RICHEY.
