On this day in 1976, the Blue Öyster Cult single “(Don’t Fear) The Reaper” debuted on the UK Singles Chart at #64 (May 20)
Songwriter, guitarist and singer Buck Dharma said “It's basically a love song where the love transcends the actual physical existence of the partners."
Dharma was diagnosed with an irregular heartbeat, which got him thinking about his mortality and inspired the song.
“I thought I was going to maybe not live that long," he said in a Songfacts interview. "I had been diagnosed with a heart condition, and your mind starts running away with you - especially when you're young-ish.
So, that's why I wrote the story.
It's imagining you can survive death in terms of your spirit.
Your spirit will prevail."
And of course, without a doubt, “(Don’t Fear) The Reaper” is one of THE most famous COWBELL songs in rock history!
Bass player Joe Bouchard remembered the producer requesting his brother, drummer Albert Bouchard, play the cowbell: "Albert thought he was crazy. But he put all this tape around a cowbell and played it.
It really pulled the track together."
However, producer David Lucas remembers it differently and says that he played it; while bandmember Eric Bloom claims that he was the one to play it!
Who really knows?
It was famously parodied on Saturday Night Live with Christopher Walken (playing a super-producer named Bruce Dickinson) constantly calling for “More cowbell!”
And Buck Dharma loved the skit!
"It's really funny," he said.
“The band had no idea it was coming, either. It was quite a surprise and phenomenal in its endurance and the way it's worked its way into the culture.
If the cowbell has been at all an annoyance for Blue Öyster Cult, it's got to be 10 times worse for Christopher Walken!
So, I'm riding that horse in the direction it's going."
The song went to #7 in Canada, #12 in the US, #16 in the UK, and #17 in Ireland.
It’s a classic…
Click on the link below to watch a simply brilliant live version:
On this day in 1975, the Eagles released the single “One of These Nights” (May 19)
The Don Henley/Glenn Frey title track from their LP of the same name, the song became their second single to top the Billboard Hot 100 chart after "Best of My Love" and also helped propel the album to the #1 spot.
In a 1975 interview with Phonograph Record, Frey explained: "It's like, puttin' things off... Everybody I'm sure has said, 'One of these nights I'm gonna...' Gonna drive back to that restaurant an' take that waitress in my arms, whatever.
Find that girl, make that money, buy that house. Move to that country. Any of that stuff. Everyone's got his ultimate dream, savin' it for 'someday.' And 'someday' is up to you."
The song also went to #5 in New Zealand and the Netherlands, #8 in Belgium, #13 in Canada, #23 in the UK, and #33 in Australia.
Click on the link below to watch:
Bass player, keyboard player, and vocalist, Dusty Hill was born Joe Michael Hill in Houston, Texas, on this day in 1949 (May 19)
Hill was the bass player for legendary rock band ZZ Top for more than 50 years.
He connected first with ZZ Top drummer Frank Beard in Dallas bands Warlocks, the Cellar Dwellers, and American Blues.
Dusty and Beard later moved to Houston, where they joined guitarist-vocalist Billy Gibbons of the Houston psychedelic band Moving Sidewalks, to form ZZ Top.
They went on to have success in the 70s with songs like "La Grange" and "Tush", and then in another career phase became MTV staples in the 80s with tracks like "Gimme All Your Lovin'", "Sharp Dressed Man", and "Legs".
ZZ Top went on to release 15 studio albums and sold an estimated 50 million albums worldwide, winning three MTV Video Music Awards, with Dusty Hill one of the three cornerstones of their success.
Hill passed away in his sleep at the age of 72 on 29 July 2021.
He was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame as a member of ZZ Top in 2004….
Click on the link below for “Tush”:
On this day in 1978, the Meat Loaf single “You Took the Words Right Out of My Mouth” debuted on the UK Singles Chart at #73 (May 20)
Meat Loaf’s debut solo single from his blockbuster album “Bat Out of Hell”, was another Jim Steinman epic masterpiece.
According to his autobiography, for this song Meat Loaf asked Jim Steinman to write a song that was not 15 or 20 minutes long, and, in Meat Loaf's words, a "pop song."
When it was first released in October 1977, it didn’t chart at all in the US Billboard Hot 100.
Following the success of the next two singles from “Bat out of Hell”, "Two Out of Three Ain't Bad" and "Paradise by the Dashboard Light", the song was re-released in October 1978 with "Paradise by the Dashboard Light" as the B-side. This release went on to peak at #39 on the Billboard Hot 100 chart, over a year after the original release of the song.
This re-release also peaked at #2 in New Zealand, #3 in Australia and the Netherlands, #4 in Belgium, #22 in Germany, #31 in Canada, and #33 in the UK.
Click on the link below to watch the clip with the spoken word intro by Jim Steinman and actress Marcia McClain:
On this day in 1978, the single “You’re the One That I Want” by John Travolta and Olivia Newton-John debuted on the UK Singles chart at #52 (May 20)
The song from the wildly successful 70s musical “Grease” is one of the best-selling singles in history, having sold over 4 million copies in the US and the UK alone, with estimates of more than 15 million copies sold worldwide…
"You're the One That I Want" was one of the two singles, along with "Hopelessly Devoted to You", that John Farrar wrote specifically for Olivia Newton-John's appearance in the film that had not been in the original stage musical.
It went to #1 in the US, the UK, and many other countries around the world, including Australia, New Zealand, the Netherlands, Ireland, Belgium, Switzerland, Sweden, and Germany, spending a whopping nine weeks at the top of the Australian and UK charts, and is still the fifth best-selling single of all time in the UK.
It also went to #2 in South Africa and Canada, and #3 in Italy.
I got chills….
On this day in 1978, the AC/DC album “Powerage” debuted on the UK Albums Chart at #26 (May 20)
This was the band's first album to feature Cliff Williams on bass, replacing Mark Evans.
In May 1977, after the recording of “Let There Be Rock”, Evans was sacked from AC/DC due to "musical differences" and personality clashes with Angus.
His last gig with the band was in Sweden on 22 April 1977 supporting Black Sabbath.
Evans reflected, "Both me and the band are better for it.
With Angus and Malcolm, they were put on this earth to form AC/DC. They're committed big-time. And if they feel your commitment is anything less than theirs, well, that's a problem.
Angus was intense.
He was AC/DC 100 percent. His work ethic was unbelievable. When I was with him, he expected everybody to be just like him, which is pretty impossible...
At the time, Malcolm said something about them wanting a bass player who could sing, but I think that was a smokescreen. I don't know if there was any one reason. It's just the way it went down. I felt the distance growing between me and Angus and Malcolm.
When I was fired, it wasn't so much a surprise as it was a shock.
There was a lot of tension in the band at the time. We'd just been kicked off a Black Sabbath tour, and this was right when a trip to the States was cancelled because the record company rejected the ‘Dirty Deeds Done Dirt Cheap’ album, so it was a hard period.”
“Powerage” was also the first AC/DC album not to have a title track (aside from the Australia-only “High Voltage” album), the first worldwide not to be released with a different album cover, and the final Bon Scott-era studio album the band recorded with the legendary Harry Vanda and George Young, who had produced all of the band's albums up to that point
While initial sales were somewhat disappointing, “Powerage” surpassed its predecessor, “Let There Be Rock”, by reaching #133 on the US Billboard 200 Albums chart, eventually achieving platinum certification.
It also peaked at #10 in France, #11 in Switzerland, #19 in Sweden, #22 in Australia, and #23 in the UK.
Eddie Van Halen and Rolling Stones' guitarist Keith Richards have both stated that “Powerage” remains their favourite AC/DC record.
The album was a favourite of Ciff Williams, and also Malcolm Young, who was quoted in AC/DC: Maximum Rock & Roll as saying,
“I know a lot of people respect it. A lot of real rock and roll AC/DC fans, the real pure rock and roll guys.
I think that's the most under-rated album of them all."
In 2005, Powerage was ranked #325 in Rock Hard magazine's book The 500 Greatest Rock & Metal Albums of All Time.
Kerrang! magazine listed the album at #26 among the "100 Greatest Heavy Metal Albums of All Time".
Click on the link below to watch “Riff Raff”:
This week in 1974, the Sweet LP “Sweet Fanny Adams” debuted on the UK Albums Chart at #37 (May 18)
Sweet’s second studio album was only released in the UK, but five of its songs appeared on the US version of “Desolation Boulevard” released in July 1975.
“Sweet Fanny Adams” featured more of a harder rock sound than their previous releases, and also showcased their compressed high-pitched backing vocal harmonies, a trend that continued on all of Sweet's albums.
Click on the link below to watch “Peppermint Twist”:
This week in 1973, the 10cc single “Rubber Bullets” debuted on the UK Singles Chart at #47 (May 19)
Kevin Godley, Lol Creme, and Graham Gouldman co-wrote the track from their self-titled debut album.
Godley recalled to Uncut:
“I think we started writing it in my parents' house, and it just came out.
It was one of those lucky songs that didn't take a fortnight to write.
We knew what the feeling of this thing was, which is kind of weird because the lyric is essentially about a fictitious black and white movie from the era of James Cagney.
We were big movie buffs in those days, me and Lol, so it was one of those kind of films... you know, with a prison riot, and there's always a padre there, and a tough cop with a megaphone. It was caricaturing those movies.”
Graham Gouldman remembered:
“Kevin and Lol had the chorus and part of the verse but then got stuck.
We all loved the chorus and realised it was a hit in itself, so we wanted to persist with it.
I chipped in the line 'we've all got balls and brains, but some's got balls and chains.'
One of my finer couplets.”
Guitarist Eric Stewart also recalled:
“I was amazed, but pleased that the BBC never banned the track, although they limited its airplay, because they thought it was about the ongoing Northern Ireland conflicts.
In fact, it was about an Attica State Prison riot like the ones in the old James Cagney films.”
Although the song was not banned by the BBC at the time of release, it was later banned for the duration of the Gulf War in 1990 and 1991.
It was the first of three UK #1 songs for 10cc, and also made it to #1 in Ireland, #3 in Australia, #17 in New Zealand and Belgium, and #18 in Germany, but it fared relatively poorly in the US where it peaked at only #73, and in Canada (their first appearance) where it reached #76.
Click on the link below to watch:
On this day in 1973, the Stevie Wonder single “You Are the Sunshine of My Life” debuted on the UK Singles Chart at #35 (May 19)
Another winner from Stevie Wonder’s burgeoning collection of hits from throughout the decades.
The song went on to become Wonder's third #1 single on the Billboard Hot 100 chart, won him a Grammy Award for Best Male Pop Vocal Performance, and was nominated for both Record of the Year and Song of the Year.
It also went to #5 in Canada, #7 in the UK, #8 in New Zealand, and #10 in Australia.
This song was the follow-up single after "Superstition" from the legendary 1972 album “Talking Book”, which stayed at #1 on the R&B albums chart for three weeks.
Rolling Stone ranks the song at #183 on their list of the "500 Greatest Songs of All Time".
Click on the link below to watch:
Songwriter, guitarist and singer Buck Dharma said “It's basically a love song where the love transcends the actual physical existence of the partners."
Dharma was diagnosed with an irregular heartbeat, which got him thinking about his mortality and inspired the song.
“I thought I was going to maybe not live that long," he said in a Songfacts interview. "I had been diagnosed with a heart condition, and your mind starts running away with you - especially when you're young-ish.
So, that's why I wrote the story.
It's imagining you can survive death in terms of your spirit.
Your spirit will prevail."
And of course, without a doubt, “(Don’t Fear) The Reaper” is one of THE most famous COWBELL songs in rock history!
Bass player Joe Bouchard remembered the producer requesting his brother, drummer Albert Bouchard, play the cowbell: "Albert thought he was crazy. But he put all this tape around a cowbell and played it.
It really pulled the track together."
However, producer David Lucas remembers it differently and says that he played it; while bandmember Eric Bloom claims that he was the one to play it!
Who really knows?
It was famously parodied on Saturday Night Live with Christopher Walken (playing a super-producer named Bruce Dickinson) constantly calling for “More cowbell!”
And Buck Dharma loved the skit!
"It's really funny," he said.
“The band had no idea it was coming, either. It was quite a surprise and phenomenal in its endurance and the way it's worked its way into the culture.
If the cowbell has been at all an annoyance for Blue Öyster Cult, it's got to be 10 times worse for Christopher Walken!
So, I'm riding that horse in the direction it's going."
The song went to #7 in Canada, #12 in the US, #16 in the UK, and #17 in Ireland.
It’s a classic…
Click on the link below to watch a simply brilliant live version:
On this day in 1975, the Eagles released the single “One of These Nights” (May 19)
The Don Henley/Glenn Frey title track from their LP of the same name, the song became their second single to top the Billboard Hot 100 chart after "Best of My Love" and also helped propel the album to the #1 spot.
In a 1975 interview with Phonograph Record, Frey explained: "It's like, puttin' things off... Everybody I'm sure has said, 'One of these nights I'm gonna...' Gonna drive back to that restaurant an' take that waitress in my arms, whatever.
Find that girl, make that money, buy that house. Move to that country. Any of that stuff. Everyone's got his ultimate dream, savin' it for 'someday.' And 'someday' is up to you."
The song also went to #5 in New Zealand and the Netherlands, #8 in Belgium, #13 in Canada, #23 in the UK, and #33 in Australia.
Click on the link below to watch:
Bass player, keyboard player, and vocalist, Dusty Hill was born Joe Michael Hill in Houston, Texas, on this day in 1949 (May 19)
Hill was the bass player for legendary rock band ZZ Top for more than 50 years.
He connected first with ZZ Top drummer Frank Beard in Dallas bands Warlocks, the Cellar Dwellers, and American Blues.
Dusty and Beard later moved to Houston, where they joined guitarist-vocalist Billy Gibbons of the Houston psychedelic band Moving Sidewalks, to form ZZ Top.
They went on to have success in the 70s with songs like "La Grange" and "Tush", and then in another career phase became MTV staples in the 80s with tracks like "Gimme All Your Lovin'", "Sharp Dressed Man", and "Legs".
ZZ Top went on to release 15 studio albums and sold an estimated 50 million albums worldwide, winning three MTV Video Music Awards, with Dusty Hill one of the three cornerstones of their success.
Hill passed away in his sleep at the age of 72 on 29 July 2021.
He was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame as a member of ZZ Top in 2004….
Click on the link below for “Tush”:
On this day in 1978, the Meat Loaf single “You Took the Words Right Out of My Mouth” debuted on the UK Singles Chart at #73 (May 20)
Meat Loaf’s debut solo single from his blockbuster album “Bat Out of Hell”, was another Jim Steinman epic masterpiece.
According to his autobiography, for this song Meat Loaf asked Jim Steinman to write a song that was not 15 or 20 minutes long, and, in Meat Loaf's words, a "pop song."
When it was first released in October 1977, it didn’t chart at all in the US Billboard Hot 100.
Following the success of the next two singles from “Bat out of Hell”, "Two Out of Three Ain't Bad" and "Paradise by the Dashboard Light", the song was re-released in October 1978 with "Paradise by the Dashboard Light" as the B-side. This release went on to peak at #39 on the Billboard Hot 100 chart, over a year after the original release of the song.
This re-release also peaked at #2 in New Zealand, #3 in Australia and the Netherlands, #4 in Belgium, #22 in Germany, #31 in Canada, and #33 in the UK.
Click on the link below to watch the clip with the spoken word intro by Jim Steinman and actress Marcia McClain:
On this day in 1978, the single “You’re the One That I Want” by John Travolta and Olivia Newton-John debuted on the UK Singles chart at #52 (May 20)
The song from the wildly successful 70s musical “Grease” is one of the best-selling singles in history, having sold over 4 million copies in the US and the UK alone, with estimates of more than 15 million copies sold worldwide…
"You're the One That I Want" was one of the two singles, along with "Hopelessly Devoted to You", that John Farrar wrote specifically for Olivia Newton-John's appearance in the film that had not been in the original stage musical.
It went to #1 in the US, the UK, and many other countries around the world, including Australia, New Zealand, the Netherlands, Ireland, Belgium, Switzerland, Sweden, and Germany, spending a whopping nine weeks at the top of the Australian and UK charts, and is still the fifth best-selling single of all time in the UK.
It also went to #2 in South Africa and Canada, and #3 in Italy.
I got chills….
On this day in 1978, the AC/DC album “Powerage” debuted on the UK Albums Chart at #26 (May 20)
This was the band's first album to feature Cliff Williams on bass, replacing Mark Evans.
In May 1977, after the recording of “Let There Be Rock”, Evans was sacked from AC/DC due to "musical differences" and personality clashes with Angus.
His last gig with the band was in Sweden on 22 April 1977 supporting Black Sabbath.
Evans reflected, "Both me and the band are better for it.
With Angus and Malcolm, they were put on this earth to form AC/DC. They're committed big-time. And if they feel your commitment is anything less than theirs, well, that's a problem.
Angus was intense.
He was AC/DC 100 percent. His work ethic was unbelievable. When I was with him, he expected everybody to be just like him, which is pretty impossible...
At the time, Malcolm said something about them wanting a bass player who could sing, but I think that was a smokescreen. I don't know if there was any one reason. It's just the way it went down. I felt the distance growing between me and Angus and Malcolm.
When I was fired, it wasn't so much a surprise as it was a shock.
There was a lot of tension in the band at the time. We'd just been kicked off a Black Sabbath tour, and this was right when a trip to the States was cancelled because the record company rejected the ‘Dirty Deeds Done Dirt Cheap’ album, so it was a hard period.”
“Powerage” was also the first AC/DC album not to have a title track (aside from the Australia-only “High Voltage” album), the first worldwide not to be released with a different album cover, and the final Bon Scott-era studio album the band recorded with the legendary Harry Vanda and George Young, who had produced all of the band's albums up to that point
While initial sales were somewhat disappointing, “Powerage” surpassed its predecessor, “Let There Be Rock”, by reaching #133 on the US Billboard 200 Albums chart, eventually achieving platinum certification.
It also peaked at #10 in France, #11 in Switzerland, #19 in Sweden, #22 in Australia, and #23 in the UK.
Eddie Van Halen and Rolling Stones' guitarist Keith Richards have both stated that “Powerage” remains their favourite AC/DC record.
The album was a favourite of Ciff Williams, and also Malcolm Young, who was quoted in AC/DC: Maximum Rock & Roll as saying,
“I know a lot of people respect it. A lot of real rock and roll AC/DC fans, the real pure rock and roll guys.
I think that's the most under-rated album of them all."
In 2005, Powerage was ranked #325 in Rock Hard magazine's book The 500 Greatest Rock & Metal Albums of All Time.
Kerrang! magazine listed the album at #26 among the "100 Greatest Heavy Metal Albums of All Time".
Click on the link below to watch “Riff Raff”:
This week in 1974, the Sweet LP “Sweet Fanny Adams” debuted on the UK Albums Chart at #37 (May 18)
Sweet’s second studio album was only released in the UK, but five of its songs appeared on the US version of “Desolation Boulevard” released in July 1975.
“Sweet Fanny Adams” featured more of a harder rock sound than their previous releases, and also showcased their compressed high-pitched backing vocal harmonies, a trend that continued on all of Sweet's albums.
Click on the link below to watch “Peppermint Twist”:
This week in 1973, the 10cc single “Rubber Bullets” debuted on the UK Singles Chart at #47 (May 19)
Kevin Godley, Lol Creme, and Graham Gouldman co-wrote the track from their self-titled debut album.
Godley recalled to Uncut:
“I think we started writing it in my parents' house, and it just came out.
It was one of those lucky songs that didn't take a fortnight to write.
We knew what the feeling of this thing was, which is kind of weird because the lyric is essentially about a fictitious black and white movie from the era of James Cagney.
We were big movie buffs in those days, me and Lol, so it was one of those kind of films... you know, with a prison riot, and there's always a padre there, and a tough cop with a megaphone. It was caricaturing those movies.”
Graham Gouldman remembered:
“Kevin and Lol had the chorus and part of the verse but then got stuck.
We all loved the chorus and realised it was a hit in itself, so we wanted to persist with it.
I chipped in the line 'we've all got balls and brains, but some's got balls and chains.'
One of my finer couplets.”
Guitarist Eric Stewart also recalled:
“I was amazed, but pleased that the BBC never banned the track, although they limited its airplay, because they thought it was about the ongoing Northern Ireland conflicts.
In fact, it was about an Attica State Prison riot like the ones in the old James Cagney films.”
Although the song was not banned by the BBC at the time of release, it was later banned for the duration of the Gulf War in 1990 and 1991.
It was the first of three UK #1 songs for 10cc, and also made it to #1 in Ireland, #3 in Australia, #17 in New Zealand and Belgium, and #18 in Germany, but it fared relatively poorly in the US where it peaked at only #73, and in Canada (their first appearance) where it reached #76.
Click on the link below to watch:
On this day in 1973, the Stevie Wonder single “You Are the Sunshine of My Life” debuted on the UK Singles Chart at #35 (May 19)
Another winner from Stevie Wonder’s burgeoning collection of hits from throughout the decades.
The song went on to become Wonder's third #1 single on the Billboard Hot 100 chart, won him a Grammy Award for Best Male Pop Vocal Performance, and was nominated for both Record of the Year and Song of the Year.
It also went to #5 in Canada, #7 in the UK, #8 in New Zealand, and #10 in Australia.
This song was the follow-up single after "Superstition" from the legendary 1972 album “Talking Book”, which stayed at #1 on the R&B albums chart for three weeks.
Rolling Stone ranks the song at #183 on their list of the "500 Greatest Songs of All Time".
Click on the link below to watch:
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