One of the greatest composers of all time Burt Bacharach was born in Kansas City, Missouri, on this day in 1928 (May 12)
One of the legends of modern music…
His songs have been recorded by over a thousand different artists, and he’s had more than 70 US Top 40 hit songs and more than 50 UK Top 40 hit songs in his career.
Some of Bacharach’s classic songs include “Walk on By", "Anyone Who Had a Heart", "I Say a Little Prayer", "I'll Never Fall in Love Again", “Do You Know the Way to San Jose?", “This Guy's in Love with You" , “Raindrops Keep Fallin' on My Head", “(They Long to Be) Close to You", “Arthur's Theme (Best That You Can Do)", and "That's What Friends Are For"
In 2008 he received a Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award when he was proclaimed music's "Greatest Living Composer."
Burt Bacharach passed away on February 8, 2023, aged 94…
Click on the link to watch Burt and Elvis Costello performing “I’ll Never Fall In Love Again” from the Austin Powers movie:
Or click on the link to watch the song he wrote sung by B. J. Thomas was for the 1969 movie “Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid” starring Paul Newman and Robert Redford, “Raindrops Keep Fallin' on My Head":
This is an amazing story that was written by David J. Krajicek in the New York Daily News on May 11, 2013:
"It was that moment late at night that every touring club band must endure: begging for their fee.
While the roadie packed the last of the gear, bass player Berry Oakley approached the Buffalo club’s owner, Angelo Aliotta.
Aliotta offered $500 for the two shows that night, April 29, 1970. But the band had $1,000 coming.
Oakley knew this tune by heart. He went to the band’s hotel and informed the tour manager, Twiggs Lyndon Jr., that they were being chiseled.
Lyndon was in no mood.
The up-and-coming Southern rockers had been on the road for five months, crisscrossing the country to promote their debut album: “The Allman Brothers Band.”
They had opened for Chicago at SUNY-Stony Brook on Long Island the previous night, then hightailed 500 miles across the state in their Winnebago to make the Wednesday night gig at Aliotta’s Lounge, on Hertel Ave. in North Buffalo.
They were to continue on to one-nighters in Cleveland and Pennsylvania before heading home to Georgia for a much-needed week off.
Lyndon, though just 27, was a veteran rock ’n’ roll road warrior.
He had stumbled into a job as tour manager for Little Richard, a fellow native of Macon, Ga., when he was 23 and fresh out of the Navy. He went on to manage tours for Percy Sledge (“When a Man Loves a Woman”), then wrangled R&B stars Otis Redding and Sam and Dave for a Stax Records tour of Europe.
When brothers Duane and Gregg Allman put together a band in 1969 for Macon’s Capricorn Records, Lyndon was hired as road manager.
“He was so organized and anal about everything,” Gregg Allman later wrote. “The world was never perfect enough for Twiggs Lyndon.”
No detail was lost on him. For example, he drew up a list of the legal age of sexual consent for each state and made copies for the band, according to Allman Brothers biographer Scott Freeman.
“
There wasn’t much Twiggs couldn’t fix,” Freeman wrote.
He was fiercely devoted to his musicians.
“Twiggs didn’t have a short fuse, but if it burned down, look out,” Gregg Allman wrote. That night in Buffalo, “Twiggs was gonna make sure we got our money.”
Lyndon stormed out of the hotel, his brown mane trailing behind and the leather sheath of his 10-inch fishing knife bouncing at his hip.
Allman said, “Twiggs, maybe you shouldn’t take that knife with you.”
Lyndon didn’t listen. He went to the club and confronted Aliotta.
The owner argued that the Allmans were late for their first show. He said he would pony up the $500 if they agreed to play a makeup set the following night.
Lyndon cursed and whipped out his knife. As six witnesses watched, the two men grappled to the barroom floor, where Aliotta soon lay groaning.
Lyndon got up, found a chair and calmly sat down.
“I stuck him,” he drawled. “I don’t care if I get the electric chair. I proved a point.”
Aliotta was dead an hour later, and Lyndon was charged with first-degree murder and locked up without bail.
The Allman Brothers’ Winnebago pulled out of Buffalo that day, bound for Cleveland. But the band made sure Lyndon got a good lawyer. In fact, he got a humdinger: John Condon Jr.
There was no doubt that Lyndon had stabbed the unarmed Aliotta in an argument over money. That was not a narrative a Buffalo jury would have viewed with sympathy, especially when the perp was a long-haired Southerner.
But Condon saw another defense: temporary insanity induced by the burnout of a rock ’n’ roll lifestyle.
He asked for a bench trial, without a jury, gambling that it would be easier to convince a judge than a conservative jury that Lyndon had been afflicted with amphetamine psychosis after five exhausting months of babysitting a band.
Managing a rock ’n’ roll tour would drive anyone nuts, Condon said. To prove his point, he called bassist Berry Oakley as an expert on narcotics abuse on the road.
“Did you take any dope in the last month?” Condon asked.
“Uh-huh,” Oakley replied.
“In the last week?”
“Oh, yeah,” the musician said.
"What about in the last hour?"
“You bet,” said Oakley.
Condon’s strategy worked. Lyndon was judged not guilty by reason of insanity. He spent 18 months in jail before trial, then about six months locked up in a psych ward.
By the summer of 1972, he was back on the road with the Allman Brothers Band, which toured relentlessly even after the motorcycle-wreck deaths in Macon of Duane Allman in 1971 and Berry Oakley in 1972.
Later in the 1970s, Lyndon toured with the Dixie Dregs, a jazz-rock fusion band.
Along the endless road, he became an avid skydiver, logging more than 300 jumps. On Nov. 16, 1979, as the Dregs were meandering toward a gig in Syracuse, Lyndon squeezed in a sky dive from an airplane based in upstate Duanesburg.
At 8,500 feet, Twiggs Lyndon exited the plane. He enjoyed a glorious view of the Catskills to the south and the Adirondacks to the north.
His chute didn’t open. He was 37…”
This week in 1981, the Who single “You Better You Bet” debuted on the Australian charts at #56 (May 11)
The song from their “Face Dances” LP was the band’s last Top 10 single in the UK, and their last Top 20 single on the US Billboard Hot 100.
The video was the fourth ever clip played on the first day of MTV on 1 August 1981, and was the first to be repeated on the channel.
It was also the first Who single to feature Kenney Jones on drums.
“You Better You Bet" went to #4 in Canada, #9 in the UK, Belgium and the Netherlands, #10 in Ireland, #18 in the US, #21 in Australia, and #23 in New Zealand.
Click on the link below to watch the clip:
On this day in 1989, the Real Life single “Send Me An Angel ‘89” debuted on the US Billboard Hot 100 at #72 (May 13)
The original version was released in 1983…
After its release, the debut single from their debut studio album “Heartland” made it all the way to #1 in Germany and New Zealand, #2 in Switzerland, #6 in Australia, #9 in Austria, #18 in Canada, #19 in Spain, and even got to #29 on the US Billboard Hot 100.
This was a massive result for a debut single from an Aussie band.
The new version released in 1989 as "Send Me An Angel '89”, peaked at #22 in New Zealand, #26 in the US (surpassing the ‘83 release), and #51 in Australia.
Click on the link below to watch:
On this day in 1994 the movie “Four Weddings and a Funeral” was released (May 13)
The soundtrack to the hit film featured songs by Elton John, Sting, Gloria Gaynor, and a cover version of The Troggs' "Love Is All Around" performed by Wet Wet Wet that remained at #1 on the UK Singles Chart for fifteen weeks and was then the ninth (now twelfth) biggest selling single of all time in Britain.
When screenwriter Richard Curtis approached Wet Wet Wet about recording a cover song to soundtrack his film “Four Weddings and a Funeral”, the band got to pick between three choices of songs, the other two being "I Will Survive" by Gloria Gaynor and "Can't Smile Without You" by Barry Manilow.
Singer Marti Pellow said the decision to pick "Love is All Around" for the film starring Andie MacDowell and Hugh Grant was an easy choice "because we knew we could make it our own".
The song, which has a different introduction from the Troggs' version, remained at #1 in the UK for 15 weeks, the joint third-longest UK chart reign of all time.
It has sold around 2 million copies in the UK, making it the country's best-selling love ballad of all time (including download and physical sales only).
The song also made it to #1 in Australia, the Netherlands, Norway, Finland, Sweden, Scotland, New Zealand, Iceland, Denmark, and Belgium…
Click on the link below to watch:
This week in 1975, the Sweet single “Fox On The Run” debuted on the Australian Charts at #82 (May 12)
“Fox On The Run” was the first Sweet single written by the actual band and not their producers, the prolific songwriting team of Nicky Chinn and Mike Chapman.
The single from the LP “Desolation Boulevard” did extremely well on the Australian charts, clocking up a massive six weeks at #1 between August and September 1975.
It went on to become the best charting single for that year in Australia…
It was also #1 in Germany, Denmark and South Africa, and a Top 5 hit in the US, the UK, Canada, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Ireland, Austria, Norway and Switzerland.
Click on the link below to watch the clip of this brilliant blast from the past:
This week in 1974, the Queen LP “Queen II” debuted on the US Billboard 200 Albums Chart at #134 (May 11)
The follow-up to their self-titled debut LP had an equally unimaginative title, and saw the band still in their art rock/prog rock/ heavy phase, with concept album elements like "Side White" and "Side Black" (instead of the conventional sides "A" and "B").
The fantasy themed Black side has some great stuff like “Ogre Battle”, “The Fairy Feller's Master Stroke”, “Nevermore”, “The March of the Black Queen”, and the single “Seven Seas of Rhye”.
The cover by rock photographer Mick Rock became a classic Queen pose, which has become synonymous with the 70s version of the band, and appears in the later “Bohemian Rhapsody” video.
This album was another important building block for what was to come…
It peaked at #5 in the UK, #19 in Norway, #26 in Japan, #40 in Canada, #49 in the US, and #79 in Australia.
Click on the link below to watch “Seven Seas of Rhye”:
This week in 1980, the Tom Petty single “Refugee” peaked on the Australian charts at #24 (May 12)
The second single from their acclaimed album “Damn the Torpedoes” also went to #2 in Canada, #3 in New Zealand, #15 in the US, #23 in Belgium, and #24 in the Netherlands.
"Refugee" has gone on to be widely regarded as one of Petty's best songs.
In 2017, Billboard ranked the song #10 on their list of the 20 greatest Tom Petty songs, and in 2020, Rolling Stone ranked the song #2 on their list of the 50 greatest Tom Petty songs.
The song's co-writer, guitarist Mike Campbell said "Refugee" was one of the first songs he wrote, and recounted, “I just wrote the music and handed it to Tom, and he put the words over it, and when he did he found a way to make the chorus lift up without changing chords.”
In a November 2003 interview with Songfacts, Campbell recalled recording “Refugee":
“We just had a hard time getting the feel right. We must have recorded that 100 times.
I remember being so frustrated with it one day that - I think this is the only time I ever did this - I just left the studio and went out of town for two days.
I just couldn't take the pressure anymore, but then I came back and when we regrouped we were actually able to get it down on tape.”
It worked - this is a brilliant rock track…
Click on the link below to watch:
One of the legends of modern music…
His songs have been recorded by over a thousand different artists, and he’s had more than 70 US Top 40 hit songs and more than 50 UK Top 40 hit songs in his career.
Some of Bacharach’s classic songs include “Walk on By", "Anyone Who Had a Heart", "I Say a Little Prayer", "I'll Never Fall in Love Again", “Do You Know the Way to San Jose?", “This Guy's in Love with You" , “Raindrops Keep Fallin' on My Head", “(They Long to Be) Close to You", “Arthur's Theme (Best That You Can Do)", and "That's What Friends Are For"
In 2008 he received a Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award when he was proclaimed music's "Greatest Living Composer."
Burt Bacharach passed away on February 8, 2023, aged 94…
Click on the link to watch Burt and Elvis Costello performing “I’ll Never Fall In Love Again” from the Austin Powers movie:
Or click on the link to watch the song he wrote sung by B. J. Thomas was for the 1969 movie “Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid” starring Paul Newman and Robert Redford, “Raindrops Keep Fallin' on My Head":
This is an amazing story that was written by David J. Krajicek in the New York Daily News on May 11, 2013:
"It was that moment late at night that every touring club band must endure: begging for their fee.
While the roadie packed the last of the gear, bass player Berry Oakley approached the Buffalo club’s owner, Angelo Aliotta.
Aliotta offered $500 for the two shows that night, April 29, 1970. But the band had $1,000 coming.
Oakley knew this tune by heart. He went to the band’s hotel and informed the tour manager, Twiggs Lyndon Jr., that they were being chiseled.
Lyndon was in no mood.
The up-and-coming Southern rockers had been on the road for five months, crisscrossing the country to promote their debut album: “The Allman Brothers Band.”
They had opened for Chicago at SUNY-Stony Brook on Long Island the previous night, then hightailed 500 miles across the state in their Winnebago to make the Wednesday night gig at Aliotta’s Lounge, on Hertel Ave. in North Buffalo.
They were to continue on to one-nighters in Cleveland and Pennsylvania before heading home to Georgia for a much-needed week off.
Lyndon, though just 27, was a veteran rock ’n’ roll road warrior.
He had stumbled into a job as tour manager for Little Richard, a fellow native of Macon, Ga., when he was 23 and fresh out of the Navy. He went on to manage tours for Percy Sledge (“When a Man Loves a Woman”), then wrangled R&B stars Otis Redding and Sam and Dave for a Stax Records tour of Europe.
When brothers Duane and Gregg Allman put together a band in 1969 for Macon’s Capricorn Records, Lyndon was hired as road manager.
“He was so organized and anal about everything,” Gregg Allman later wrote. “The world was never perfect enough for Twiggs Lyndon.”
No detail was lost on him. For example, he drew up a list of the legal age of sexual consent for each state and made copies for the band, according to Allman Brothers biographer Scott Freeman.
“
There wasn’t much Twiggs couldn’t fix,” Freeman wrote.
He was fiercely devoted to his musicians.
“Twiggs didn’t have a short fuse, but if it burned down, look out,” Gregg Allman wrote. That night in Buffalo, “Twiggs was gonna make sure we got our money.”
Lyndon stormed out of the hotel, his brown mane trailing behind and the leather sheath of his 10-inch fishing knife bouncing at his hip.
Allman said, “Twiggs, maybe you shouldn’t take that knife with you.”
Lyndon didn’t listen. He went to the club and confronted Aliotta.
The owner argued that the Allmans were late for their first show. He said he would pony up the $500 if they agreed to play a makeup set the following night.
Lyndon cursed and whipped out his knife. As six witnesses watched, the two men grappled to the barroom floor, where Aliotta soon lay groaning.
Lyndon got up, found a chair and calmly sat down.
“I stuck him,” he drawled. “I don’t care if I get the electric chair. I proved a point.”
Aliotta was dead an hour later, and Lyndon was charged with first-degree murder and locked up without bail.
The Allman Brothers’ Winnebago pulled out of Buffalo that day, bound for Cleveland. But the band made sure Lyndon got a good lawyer. In fact, he got a humdinger: John Condon Jr.
There was no doubt that Lyndon had stabbed the unarmed Aliotta in an argument over money. That was not a narrative a Buffalo jury would have viewed with sympathy, especially when the perp was a long-haired Southerner.
But Condon saw another defense: temporary insanity induced by the burnout of a rock ’n’ roll lifestyle.
He asked for a bench trial, without a jury, gambling that it would be easier to convince a judge than a conservative jury that Lyndon had been afflicted with amphetamine psychosis after five exhausting months of babysitting a band.
Managing a rock ’n’ roll tour would drive anyone nuts, Condon said. To prove his point, he called bassist Berry Oakley as an expert on narcotics abuse on the road.
“Did you take any dope in the last month?” Condon asked.
“Uh-huh,” Oakley replied.
“In the last week?”
“Oh, yeah,” the musician said.
"What about in the last hour?"
“You bet,” said Oakley.
Condon’s strategy worked. Lyndon was judged not guilty by reason of insanity. He spent 18 months in jail before trial, then about six months locked up in a psych ward.
By the summer of 1972, he was back on the road with the Allman Brothers Band, which toured relentlessly even after the motorcycle-wreck deaths in Macon of Duane Allman in 1971 and Berry Oakley in 1972.
Later in the 1970s, Lyndon toured with the Dixie Dregs, a jazz-rock fusion band.
Along the endless road, he became an avid skydiver, logging more than 300 jumps. On Nov. 16, 1979, as the Dregs were meandering toward a gig in Syracuse, Lyndon squeezed in a sky dive from an airplane based in upstate Duanesburg.
At 8,500 feet, Twiggs Lyndon exited the plane. He enjoyed a glorious view of the Catskills to the south and the Adirondacks to the north.
His chute didn’t open. He was 37…”
This week in 1981, the Who single “You Better You Bet” debuted on the Australian charts at #56 (May 11)
The song from their “Face Dances” LP was the band’s last Top 10 single in the UK, and their last Top 20 single on the US Billboard Hot 100.
The video was the fourth ever clip played on the first day of MTV on 1 August 1981, and was the first to be repeated on the channel.
It was also the first Who single to feature Kenney Jones on drums.
“You Better You Bet" went to #4 in Canada, #9 in the UK, Belgium and the Netherlands, #10 in Ireland, #18 in the US, #21 in Australia, and #23 in New Zealand.
Click on the link below to watch the clip:
On this day in 1989, the Real Life single “Send Me An Angel ‘89” debuted on the US Billboard Hot 100 at #72 (May 13)
The original version was released in 1983…
After its release, the debut single from their debut studio album “Heartland” made it all the way to #1 in Germany and New Zealand, #2 in Switzerland, #6 in Australia, #9 in Austria, #18 in Canada, #19 in Spain, and even got to #29 on the US Billboard Hot 100.
This was a massive result for a debut single from an Aussie band.
The new version released in 1989 as "Send Me An Angel '89”, peaked at #22 in New Zealand, #26 in the US (surpassing the ‘83 release), and #51 in Australia.
Click on the link below to watch:
On this day in 1994 the movie “Four Weddings and a Funeral” was released (May 13)
The soundtrack to the hit film featured songs by Elton John, Sting, Gloria Gaynor, and a cover version of The Troggs' "Love Is All Around" performed by Wet Wet Wet that remained at #1 on the UK Singles Chart for fifteen weeks and was then the ninth (now twelfth) biggest selling single of all time in Britain.
When screenwriter Richard Curtis approached Wet Wet Wet about recording a cover song to soundtrack his film “Four Weddings and a Funeral”, the band got to pick between three choices of songs, the other two being "I Will Survive" by Gloria Gaynor and "Can't Smile Without You" by Barry Manilow.
Singer Marti Pellow said the decision to pick "Love is All Around" for the film starring Andie MacDowell and Hugh Grant was an easy choice "because we knew we could make it our own".
The song, which has a different introduction from the Troggs' version, remained at #1 in the UK for 15 weeks, the joint third-longest UK chart reign of all time.
It has sold around 2 million copies in the UK, making it the country's best-selling love ballad of all time (including download and physical sales only).
The song also made it to #1 in Australia, the Netherlands, Norway, Finland, Sweden, Scotland, New Zealand, Iceland, Denmark, and Belgium…
Click on the link below to watch:
This week in 1975, the Sweet single “Fox On The Run” debuted on the Australian Charts at #82 (May 12)
“Fox On The Run” was the first Sweet single written by the actual band and not their producers, the prolific songwriting team of Nicky Chinn and Mike Chapman.
The single from the LP “Desolation Boulevard” did extremely well on the Australian charts, clocking up a massive six weeks at #1 between August and September 1975.
It went on to become the best charting single for that year in Australia…
It was also #1 in Germany, Denmark and South Africa, and a Top 5 hit in the US, the UK, Canada, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Ireland, Austria, Norway and Switzerland.
Click on the link below to watch the clip of this brilliant blast from the past:
This week in 1974, the Queen LP “Queen II” debuted on the US Billboard 200 Albums Chart at #134 (May 11)
The follow-up to their self-titled debut LP had an equally unimaginative title, and saw the band still in their art rock/prog rock/ heavy phase, with concept album elements like "Side White" and "Side Black" (instead of the conventional sides "A" and "B").
The fantasy themed Black side has some great stuff like “Ogre Battle”, “The Fairy Feller's Master Stroke”, “Nevermore”, “The March of the Black Queen”, and the single “Seven Seas of Rhye”.
The cover by rock photographer Mick Rock became a classic Queen pose, which has become synonymous with the 70s version of the band, and appears in the later “Bohemian Rhapsody” video.
This album was another important building block for what was to come…
It peaked at #5 in the UK, #19 in Norway, #26 in Japan, #40 in Canada, #49 in the US, and #79 in Australia.
Click on the link below to watch “Seven Seas of Rhye”:
This week in 1980, the Tom Petty single “Refugee” peaked on the Australian charts at #24 (May 12)
The second single from their acclaimed album “Damn the Torpedoes” also went to #2 in Canada, #3 in New Zealand, #15 in the US, #23 in Belgium, and #24 in the Netherlands.
"Refugee" has gone on to be widely regarded as one of Petty's best songs.
In 2017, Billboard ranked the song #10 on their list of the 20 greatest Tom Petty songs, and in 2020, Rolling Stone ranked the song #2 on their list of the 50 greatest Tom Petty songs.
The song's co-writer, guitarist Mike Campbell said "Refugee" was one of the first songs he wrote, and recounted, “I just wrote the music and handed it to Tom, and he put the words over it, and when he did he found a way to make the chorus lift up without changing chords.”
In a November 2003 interview with Songfacts, Campbell recalled recording “Refugee":
“We just had a hard time getting the feel right. We must have recorded that 100 times.
I remember being so frustrated with it one day that - I think this is the only time I ever did this - I just left the studio and went out of town for two days.
I just couldn't take the pressure anymore, but then I came back and when we regrouped we were actually able to get it down on tape.”
It worked - this is a brilliant rock track…
Click on the link below to watch:
