When it comes to protest songs, some of the biggest ambassadors would be people like Bruce Springsteen, Bob Dylan and Billy Bragg, but many non-protest acts would make a one-off protest song about something they feel strongly about, e.g., Tom Robinson recorded Glad to Be Gay, Creedence Clearwater Revival sang Fortunate Son, Yes campaigned with Don’t Kill The Whale and The Special AKA were urging the authorities to free Nelson Mandela. For What It’s Worth is this week’s suggestion but what it is about?
Buffalo Springfield were a Canadian/American folk/country band whose name is derived from a make of American road roller, or steam roller as we call it. The five-piece who formed in 1966 comprised Stephen Stills on guitar, vocals and keyboards, Bruce Palmer on bass, drummer Dewey Martin, Ritchie Furay on guitar and Neil Young on vocals and harmonica. Their debut single, Nowadays Clancy Can’t Even Sing, was written by Neil Young after returning from Toronto whilst attempting to launch a solo career, but the single failed to take off, but it was the follow-up, For What It’s Worth, that put them firmly on the map.
The song has been covered by a number of people in varying styles, Ozzy Osbourne was brash with it, Kid Rock made it a rock tribute and Public Enemy sampled it on their 1998 song He Got Game which featured in the movie of the same name and featured Stills as guest vocalist. It also appears briefly in Forrest Gump.
Stills and Young have both had solo careers as well as being half of Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young. Furay became a member of Poco and then launched a solo career, Martin formed for a new version of the band called New Buffalo Springfield and released some solo material, Dewey died in 2009 and Palmer released one solo album in 1971 and then formed a band in Toronto with some old friends and called themselves Village and performed some local gigs. He died in 2004 from a heart attack.
According to BMI, the song’s publishing house, For What It’s Worth been played over 9 million times on TV and radio worldwide.
One of the oldest songs to get to number one in the UK was Two Little Boys which became the last chart-topper of the sixties for Rolf Harris. It was originally written in 1903 by Theodore Morse and Edward Madden and first recorded by the Irish-American singer Billy Murray. This week’s suggestion began life just eight years later.
They were formed in Manchester in 1964 and comprised guitarist Derek Leckenby, bassist Karl Green, rhythm guitarist Keith Hopwood and drummer Barry Whitwam. The name change came from a suggestion by a pub landlord who noted that Noone looked a little similar to Sherman, a character in the American cartoon series Rocky and Bullwinkle and so the group were briefly called Herman and the Hermits, but once the line-up was completed it was shortened to Herman’s Hermits. “The band got busy, and we spent all day looking for work,” continued Noone, “I bought a van paid for by my TV thing. So we just slowly moved into this next level. Everybody lived by now at my grandmother’s and everybody eats at my grandmother’s. We became close and went around the world. People think it took a minute, but it actually took a long time. There was no overnight success for us. We struggled, and sometimes we’d make enough money to eat after the show. We’d go to a fish and chips shop but we wouldn’t get the fish, we’d only get the chips.
They opened their chart account with a cover of a song first recorded by Earl Jean called I’m Into Something Good which gave them their only UK chart-topper, which is one less than they had in America. Over there they charted 22 hits in the same period and their two chart toppers were strangely un-issued in the UK. The first was Mrs Brown You’ve Got A Lovely Daughter which was written by the British actor Trevor Peacock who is best remembered for his roles as Jim Trott in The Vicar Of Dibley and as Captain Zero in Last of the Summer Wine. It was originally sung by another actor, Tom Courtenay, in a 1963 British TV show called The Lads. Noone had seen the series and recorded it onto tape to learn. Incidentally, Peacock had written TV scripts for the music shows Oh Boy! and Six-Five Special and the hits Made You (Adam Faith), Mystery Girl (Jess Conrad), Gossip Calypso (Bernard Cribbins) and That’s What Love Will Do (Joe Brown). He is now 87 and retired. Their other number one, later the same year, was I’m Henry the Eighth I Am.
I’m Henery the Eighth, I Am, as it was originally titled, was written by R.P. Weston and Fred Murray and first published in 1910 and became the signature tune of the music hall cockney comedian and singer Harry Champion (b: William Henry Crump 1865-1942) who recorded the original version of it. Harry’s version had a number of long rambling verses followed by the short chorus of, ‘I’m Henry the eighth I am, Henry the eighth I am, I am, I got married to the widow next door, she’s been married seven times before’. Noone explained what happened when they came to record it, “We went into the studio and I tried it and there were so many verses but I could only remember one so I just kept doing it and that’s not even the verse, it’s the chorus.” He did add ‘And every one was a Henry, she wouldn’t have a Willy or a Sam’ but other than that they ended up singing it three times. Champion also recorded the original versions of Boiled Beef and Carrots and Any Old Iron which were both recorded later by Peter Sellers.
They lyrics don’t really make any sense, obviously named-checking the 16th century King who reigned from 1509-1547, but marrying the widow next door Henry never did and, she may have been married seven times before, but the real King only had six wives.
Cockney singer Joe Brown recorded the song in 1963 as I’m ‘Enry VIII I Am which influenced the way Noone sang it, the cartoon characters The Chipmunks recorded a version in 1965 and in 1990 you may remember Patrick Swayze singing it in Ghost.
Peter Noone left the Hermits in 1971 and had a brief solo career in which he signed to Mickie Most’s RAK label. Most had signed the Hermits in 1965 after he went to see them in Bolton. In 1980, Noone briefly formed a new wave band called The Tremblers who released one album called Twice Nightly and featured Dave Clark, members of Tom Petty’s Heartbreakers and backing vocals from Elton John. He always kept his hand in with acting having originally been a teen actor in Coronation Street. In 1983 received critical acclaim when he appeared in the London stage version of The Pirates of Penzance.
Noone is 71 and still touring around the USA. He still sings all the Hermits catalogue but Mrs Brown You’ve got A Lovely Daughter still goes down the best because Noone adapts the name to the party present.
In the 1990s Noone presented a programme called My Generation on VH-1 and in the early 2010s was a DJ on the internet-based radio station SiriusXM presenting a programme called Something Good.
There are probably more radio stations concentrating on 1980s music shows than on any other decade. Twitter and Facebook are full of stations and their fans suggesting and raving about the songs they’ve heard recently. #My80s is one, forgotten 80s is another. There is also a number of bloggers; talking 80s music, Like Totally 80s and Stuck in the 80s are just three. Even Radio two have brought Gary Davies back for an eighties show, which is no bad thing. At least he is a DJ and was there in that decade as opposed to his predecessor and to the never ending list of ‘celebrities’ who are not really DJs. One particular song that I’ve not seen talked about, fair enough I’m not glued to these stations 24/7, is a number 28 hit from early 1984 by a British band called Re-Flex.
Re-Flex, who got their name from Re-Fuse which was inspired by a graffiti artist who tagged his work with RE-FUSE, were from London and formed in late-1979 with an original line-up comprising founder member singer/lead guitarist John Baxter and keyboardist Paul Fishman. They recruited John Hodge (guitar), Francois Craig (bass) and two drummers, Philip Gould and Mark King. Within a few months the line-up altered, Gould and King left and was replaced by Roland Kerridge and Craig departed and was replaced by Nigel Ross-Scott who was recommended by Thomas Dolby.
Fishman wrote or co-wrote most of the band’s songs, his upbringing certainly helped as his father was Jack Fishman who had co-written, Arrivederci Darling – a hit for both Anne Shelton and Edna Savage in the fifties and the top 10 hits My Friend The Sea (Petula Clark), If I Only Had Time (John Rowles), Help Yourself (Tom Jones), Something’s Happening and Years May Come, Years May Go (Herman’s Hermits) and the 1969 chart-topper (If Paradise Is) Half As Nice for Amen Corner.
It did OK in America where it reached number 24 on the Hot 100, but the follow up’s didn’t really connect, Hurt peaked at number 82 in the Hot 100 and Couldn’t Stand a Day fared worse at number 97. In 1985 they released the album Humanication which featured the single How Much Longer and despite having Sting on backing vocals that too failed to excite the public.
They called it a day in 1985 and the main reason was, as is so often the case, the record company started issuing demands the band were not happy with, “When it came to that album, EMI said ‘You need to sound like an American band'” Fishman said, “They also said, ‘Let’s get this hip hop remix guy in – he’s trendy, he’s got his trousers on backwards’. Bloody ridiculous so we preferred to split than stay together.
Fishman moved into production and signed with Trevor Horn’s SARM studio, Baxter married the head of the video department at Capitol records (a subsidiary of EMI) and moved to Los Angeles, Kerridge became more of a session drummer and worked with A-Ha, Del Amitri and Morrissey, but sadly died in February 2012 following three rounds of surgery in an attempt to remove a brain tumour. He was 57. Ross-Scott went on to play with Kevin Rowland and Pete Wylie and then briefly became a video jock on MTV- Europe. In the mid-nineties he was the voice of the AA traffic reports on various Home Counties radio stations.
This week’s suggestion began as folk ballad and only became as famous as it did thanks to it being accidently used in a film. In its original form it was unlikely to have been a hit said its unlikely named songwriter Mars Bonfire. Let’s find out how.
It’s often been described as the first heavy metal song because it contains the words ‘heavy metal thunder’ but that’s not the case as the term was first coined by William Burroughs in his 1961 novel The Soft Machine in which he used it to describe the character Uranian Willy as ‘the Heavy Metal Kid.’ Also Musicologists will argue that the first heavy metal track is more likely The Gun’s 1968 hit Race with The Devil which preceded it by seven months.
In 1969 production of the movie Easy Rider began, it was directed by Peter Fonda and Dennis Hooper who also star in it as two bikers who ride from Los Angeles to New Orleans and en route meet a man who bridges a counter-culture gap they are unaware of. There was no plan for Born to Be Wild to be included as Peter Fonda was a fan of Crosby, Stills & Nash and wanted them to provide the soundtrack, it became apparent, however, that the song was right for the movie and it got included. Incidentally, another Steppenwolf track, The Pusher, was also included. Other acts whose music was included was The Byrds, Roger McGuinn, Little Eva, The Electric Prunes and the Jimi Hendrix Experience.
It was a favourite of Slade who not only regularly included in their shows, but chose it as the closing track on their Slade Alive album. Other acts who have covered it include The Cult, U2, Status Quo, Slayer, Blue Oster Cult, Inxs, Etta James, Wilson Pickett, Bruce Springsteen and even Kim Wilde. In 1994, Miss Piggy duetted with Ozzy Osbourne on a version which was included on the album Kermit Unpigged.
In 2004, Paris Hilton courteously asked Bonfire if she could include the track as part of her Simple Life 2 show but he vehemently denied.
In America, the song cropped up again, this time in a 2017 TV commercial for the Mercedes-AMG GT Roadster. It was used during the Super Bowl between the New England Patriots and Atlanta Falcons and directed by the Coen brothers which features a re-created scene where Fonda has swapped his bike for the Merc.
In 2018, for the first time, songs are being inducted into the Rock ‘N’ Roll Hall of Fame in a brand new singles category called ‘Devoted songs that changed the course of rock music’. The first five inductees were, Rocket 88 (Jackie Brenston and his Delta Cats), Rumble (Link Wray and his Ray Men), Louie Louie (The Kingsmen), A White Shade of Pale (Procol Harum) and Born to Be Wild (Steppenwolf).
A favourite topic of conversation, not only amongst music fans, but people in general is, ‘what is your favourite song of a particular decade or genre and by such and such an artist, the Beatles often being one of the most asked. Peter Asher of Peter and Gordon said I Want to Hold Your Hand, Brian Wilson of the Beach Boys favours She’s Leaving Home, Rick Wakeman prefers I Am the Walrus, mine? A Day in the Life. This week’s suggestion is Paul McCartney favourite.
By the late summer of 1967, the Beatles were reaping the rewards of Sgt Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band which had been released at the beginning of June but were soon back in the studio recording some adhoc stuff and a bit half-heartedly. They had been taking some substances therefore not concentrating fully and EMI were paying for the studio time, so what the heck. I Am the Walrus can be a good indication of their states of mind and so was, You Know My Name (Look up the Number) which was recorded around this time.
Although nearly all Beatles song are jointly credited as Lennon/McCartney, it was more obvious which one wrote the majority, if not all, of the song. You Know My Name was conceived by John.
It has a normal intro but when the vocals start 18 seconds in you think, ooh this is weird. In Many Years from Now by Barry Miles Paul recalled his first hearing of it, “John had arrived one night with this song which was basically a mantra and I never knew who he was aiming that at, it might have been an early signal to Yoko. It was John’s original idea and that was the complete lyric. He brought it in originally as a 15-minute chant when he was in space-cadet mode and we said, ‘Well, what are we going to do with this then?’ and he said, ‘It’s just like a mantra.’ So we said, ‘Okay, let’s just do it’.
They started recording it in 1967 and it featured all kinds of strange noises including the sound of a shovel digging up gravel and it was Mal Evans, the Beatles’ roadie, on spade duty. The song also features the Rolling Stones’ Brian Jones on alto saxophone who was there on Paul’s invitation.
There’s a part of the original recording which was edited out to John’s chagrin. It was a where John repeated the mantra to a ska backing, but it was restored in 1996 with a new stereo mix which then appeared on Anthology 2.
The first part of the track was done over 14 different takes. Take 10 was originally favoured but then they used bits of take nine and they eventually recorded a further five takes which featured electric guitar, drums, flute, organ and tambourine and it still sounded like a Bonzo Dog Doo-Dah Band outtake!
The second part of the song you hear John saying, “Good evening and welcome to Slaggers, featuring Dennis O’Bell”. Slaggers should be pronounced Schlagers which is a German term for a kind of sentimental music and Dennis O’Bell is a sly tribute to the film producer Dennis O’Dell who had previously worked with the Beatles on A Hard Day’s Night. He later produced the Magical Mystery Tour and then went on to head up Apple Films.
Another section of the song, which was supposed to be the last section, but the verses were altered during the editing process, was a nod to the wonderful world of Monty Python and it featured many strange sounds including bongos, harmonica, some cuckoo noises and some very typical silly Python-esque voices. What became the last section was a jazz-piano type piece with an array of incomprehensible vocals.
The almost finished article ran to just over six minutes and John had the idea of releasing it as a Plastic Ono Band A-side, but the other Beatles disagreed and that idea was shelved. John then edited it down to just over four minutes and it was eventually released as the flip side of the Beatles final single whilst they were still together, Let It Be in 1970.