[Bruno Del Granado, Co-host:] Who would have ever thought last summer that a song with a title like "Blue Ds Ba Dee" would become a global smash, selling more than five million singles and over two million albums, one million in the USA alone? Currently riding high with their second number one worldwide smash, "Move Your Body," Jeffrey Maritzio and Gabrie, better known as Eiffel 65, are proving that when it comes to "Euro Pop," as their album is aptly named, no one does it better than the Italians.
[Jeffrey Jey, Eiffel 65:] The meaning of Euro pop actually, you can split this into Euro and pop. With Euro, we're meaning a gathering of different dance, European cultures. So we're talking about trip hop coming from the U.K., techno from Germany, we're talking about dance from Italy. It's all blended together. In fact, the different tracks have a different kind of dance situation as a bottom arrangement. And pop means that there's always a song on it. So that's exactly what we're saying, Euro pop and songs put onto a European dance situation.
[Gabry Ponte, Eiffel 65:] We have a tradition for the dance music in Italy and our, I think, our best thing in Italy is the composition of the melody. That's the reason why we thought that blue is a good mix between a good Italian melodies and the good situation in dance, you know, rhythmically speaking.
[Jey:] And we used a computer to choose the first part of the name because us three guys are producers so you don't really want to waste time, waste a lot of time choosing names. So Eiffel came out of the computer. But 65 nobody chose it. We got the record and we just went in there and it was like who did this? And we found out that our producer was writing a phone number and two digits of the phone number ended up on the label copy. And the graphic artist thought that it was part of the name put on afterwards and he just fused it all together without saying anything to anybody. "Too Much of Heaven" is still a song that is based on dance music, but this time we're talking about trip pop music, same as blue, talking about a lifestyle. In this case we're talking about having too much of one thing that can spoil your entire existence, like maybe money so that's the only thing that becomes important in your life and you forget your family, your friends and you end up becoming money wise, money this and money that.
[Ponte:] I came from a classic study of piano but I like to play other things and to listen to all the styles. But I prefer this experimental one. I prefer the I'm always looking for a very particular electronic.
[Jey:] Jeffrey was raised with rap music, rock music living in the United States, of course, and I moved on to in the '80s the electronic scene, which totally captured me, like Depeche Mode and, you know, that electronic stuff, Craft Work, computer with music. That was the culmination, you know, because I love computers and I love music and when I knew that I could combine them together it was like, OK, I don't need anything else, you know?
[Maurizio Lobina, Eiffel 65:] I like all the music too, but I am especially fond of dance music because I started my life in the music business as a deejay.
[Jey:] What we're mainly doing is continuing exactly what we were doing before "Blue." If we're sitting down in a studio, we're not thinking hey, this is going to be the new Eiffel and it has to be like this and it's got to sell. We don't care. I mean we just sit down and do exactly what we do. We love doing music.
[Ian Dury, Musician:] I'm not here to be remembered. I'm here to be savored.
[Neil Curry, "the Beat":] The memory of Ian Dury was savored this week by his fellow artists after the prince of punk poetry lost a long battle with cancer. The 57-year-old singer brought humor to the British new wave in the late '70s with classics like "Hit Me With Your Rhythm Stick."
[Curry:] Crippled by polio since childhood, Dury campaigned for vaccinations, joining fellow artist Robbie Williams on this UNICEF trip to Sri Lanka in 1998. Dury's acting skills took him to work in both theater and television. But it was his music which left a lasting impression from fellow British bands like Madness and Chumbawumba.
[Boff, Chumbawumba:] He successfully took the idea of being very aware of what was going on in the world into punk. It wasn't just I'm against this and I'm against that, it was like OK, I love song, but he wrote it in a sort of punk way.
[Curry:] Dury's writing partner, Chaz Jankel, recalls how Rhythm Stick emerged from a jamming session.
[Chaz Jankel, Ian Dury & The Blockheads:] So I'm sitting there and the scientist in me suddenly went heaven, if I go ba ba da dun dun dun with this little motif that had come out of the jam that I'd had with him, if I add that to the fun of it, I would get da unga ding a ding ding ding ding de da da da. So the next thing is I call up Ian and I said hey, I've got this great idea. And I told him this idea. And by this time he'd moved the drums and the piano into a garage. And he said oh, well hang on a moment. He said I'll be back in a second. He runs into the house, comes out with a typewritten lyric and he's there it is, "Hit Me With Your Rhythm Stick."
[Jankel:] I think it's enduring. I don't enduring, enduring, enduring. I think it's going to carry on, you know? I just can't see it fading. He brought a lot of light and a lot of happiness, you know, to people's lives. He wasn't conventional by any stretch of the imagination. He didn't fit into a slot. You know, he was the classic rebel.
[Curry:] "The Beat" this week is devoted to the memory of Ian Dury. For the rest of this week's music news, visit our Web site at cnn.comworldbeat. I'm Neil Curry and that's "The Beat."
[Alexander:] After the break, we are California bound as Serena Yang meets with Billy Corgan to get the inside track on the latest release from the Smashing Pumpkins.