Behind the song: Dancing In The Street

If there was a ranking with the most bizarre 80s music videos, Dancing In The Street by Mick Jagger and David Bowie would surely get a place in the top 5. Having seen this there can be no doubt, where the rumours about an affair between the two famous musicians come from.

However, the song has an interesting background story. Dancing In The Street was originally performed by Martha & The Vandellas in 1964. Then in 1985 there was the idea that Bowie and Jagger should perform the song together at Live Aid via satellite link with Bowie singing at Wembley stadium and Jagger on stage in Philadelphia. But soon it turned out that the satellite connection would cause a half-second delay and make the cross-continental live duet impossible unless either Jagger or Bowie mimed their contribution. As neither of them was willing to do that, they buried the original plan and decided to record the song as a charity single instead. They made some slight changes to the lyrics. Their announcement at the beginning “Ok, Tokyo, South American, Australia, France, Germany, UK, Africa” should reflect the international message of charity. The line “Back in the U.S.S.R” is a reference to the Beatles song of the same title.

 

 

When Bowie was recording his parts for the Absolute Beginners soundtrack at Abbey Road studios, Jagger flew over to London, too, and they converted some studio time to record Dancing In The Street. The producer Clive Langer told 1000 UK #1 Hits: „We were working on Absolute Beginners with Bowie. We were doing the backing track and David said, ‚Do you mind if we do a charity single tonight?‘ I said, not at all, we’ll help you.”

The recording didn’t take more than four hours. Mick Jagger told the Rolling Stone magazine: „We banged it out in just two takes. It was an interesting exercise in how you can do something without worrying too much.“

Immediately after the recording Bowie and Jagger went straight to the Docklands to film a video for the song with director David Mallet. And 13 hours after Jagger had entered the studio to record the song, the infamous video was finished, too. Maliciously you could say, maybe they should have taken some more time. Cheesy dance moves, strange performance and silly clothes – but hey, it was the 80s and  it’s great fun to watch.

 

Fun Facts

• In a survey the song was voted as the top song British people would play at street parties on the occasion of the Royal Wedding of William and Kate.
• At the end of a Family Guy episode the video is played in its entire length followed by Peter Griffin speaking the words: „That happened. And we all let it happen.“ (watch on youtube)

See also

• Read a funny scene by scene analysis of the video on grantland.com:
  Rembert explains the ’80s: David Bowie and Mick Jagger „Dancing in the Street“

Behind the song: Do They Know It’s Christmas?

At Christmas time in 1984 the most famous artists in British music business took part in the Band Aid charity project and the single Do They Know It’s Christmas? reached number 1 in 13 countries becoming the fastest selling record in UK chart history.

In October 1984 Bob Geldof saw a television report about the terrible famine in Ethiopia and had the idea to record a charity single to raise money for those hit by the famine. He called his friend, Ultravox singer Midge Ure, who agreed at once, and together they wrote Do They Know It’s Christmas.

On 25 November 1984 the song was recorded at Sarm West Studios in London, which were left to the Band Aid project for free for 24 hours. At his home studio Ure had already arranged a backing track and recorded the vocals of Simon Le Bon and Sting to provide a guide for the other vocalist.

 

At 9 am on 25 November the first artists (among them Duran Duran, Spandau Ballet, Sting, Culture Club, Paul Young, George Michael, Bono and Phil Collins) arrived at the studios, where the world’s press was waiting. To get all musicians together Ure decided to record the group parts first. The artists formed a huge choir and sang the lines „Feed the world, let them know it’s Christmas time“.
Then he went on with the solo vocal parts. Spandau Ballet’s Tony Hadley volunteered for the unpleasant job to be the first in the recording booth, while all the others were watching him.
Although their vocals had already been recorded  at Midge Ure’s private studio, Simon Le Bon and Sting sang their parts again to be part of the moment.
Phil Collins even brought his entire drum kit to the session. Beside Collin’s drums the finished record also features an African rhythm, which was taken from the Tears for Fears song The Hurting.
The last one in the studio was Boy George. After Bob Geldof had woken him up with a telephone call in his New York hotel room, the Culture Club singer took a flight with the Concorde to London and arrived at 6 pm.

After the recording session Midge Ure worked on the mix through the whole night. When they had finally finished the job  in the early morning hours, Bob Geldof recorded the following statement: „This Record was recorded on the 25th of November 1984. It’s now eight a.m. on the 26th. We’ve been here 24 hours and I think it’s time we went home.“

Three days later the single was published and until Christmas 1984 already 8 million dollar had been earned for the people in Ethiopia.

Behind the song: Hells Bells

Hells Bells (song) (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

This is an amazing story that shows how music can touch people and sometimes even save lives. The song that saved a life was Hells Bells by AC/DC.

During the Battle of Mogadishu in 1993 the helicopter of Black Hawk pilot Michael Durant was shot out of the sky. The Somali militiamen, who had killed his whole team, captured and imprisoned him. The US soldiers searched for Durant, but couldn’t find him. Knowing that he was a huge AC/DC fan and that Hells Bells was his absolute favourite song, in a last desperate attempt they attached loudspeakers to a helicopter, flew around the area and played Hells Bells at full volume. Durant in his cell heard the tolling of the bell and the beginning of the song and that was, when he started to hope. Although he had suffered a broken back from the crash of his helicopter, he crawled to the window and waved his shirt. Actually he was saved and recovered from his injuries – thanks to this AC/DC song.

Although nothing can get ahead of this story, there some other interesting and funny facts about the song:

Hells Bells was released in 1980 and is a tribute to AC/DC singer Bon Scott, who had died the same year.  It is the first song on the album Back To Black and the debut of Scott’s follower Brian Johnson.

The original AC/DC Hells Bell is a replica of the Denison Bell at the War Memorial in Loughborough, Leicestershire, England and was manufactured exclusively for the band. As the production time for the album was short and they feared the bell wouldn’t be finished in time, they tried to record the original Denison Bell, but the sound of some flattering birds ruined the record. So the band had to wait for their bell, which, however, arrived in good time. Because of its massive weight the bell caused a lot of problems on early AC/DC tours. The roofs of many venues weren’t strong enough to hold the bell and one time, the whole thing came down, nearly crushing Angus Young. So the  original Hells Bell was finally replaced by a lighter one.

http://www.dailymotion.com/video/xvh56_ac-dc-hell-s-bells_music?search_algo=2

 

Info taken from:
Classic Rock Magazine
AC/DC Official Homepage

 

Behind the song: Every Breath You Take

Every Breath You Take (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Every Breath You Take, probably the most famous song of The Police, often finds itself categorized as a lovesong. Beyond any doubt the song is a beautiful masterpiece of music. However, it’s the complete opposite of a lovesong. The lyrics tell about the end of a relationship, about control, obsession and stalking. Sting himself was worried that many people interpret the song in a much too positive way. “A couple told me: ‘We love that song! They even played it on our wedding.’ And I thought: ‘Well, good luck.’”

Sting wrote the song, when his marriage with Frances Tomelty came to an end. “I woke up in the middle of the night with that line in my head, sat down at the piano and had written it in half an hour. The tune itself is generic, an aggregate of hundreds of others, but the words are interesting. It sounds like a comforting love song. I didn’t realise at the time how sinister it is. I think I was thinking of Big Brother, surveillance and control.”

While Sting wrote the song literally in his sleep, the recordings of Every Breath You Take and the whole album Synchronicity became a crucial test to both band and producer. In that time the three band members had heavy creative and personal differences and couldn’t be together in one room without verbal (and sometimes physical) fights breaking out.

 

http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x1zfqw_the-police-every-breath-you-take_music?search_algo=2#.UTO2vKKQXIU

 

Sting brought a demo to the band, which was quite simple, only him singing over a Hammond organ. Drummer Stewart Copeland said he knew instantly that this song was The Big One. While the other album tracks usually took a day, the recording of Every Breath You Take took a week. The problem about the song was its simplicity. “We couldn’t do a lot of stuff, because that would ruin it, so the stuff we did had to be the right stuff.”, Copeland explained.

Although all members of The Police knew, it was a great song, they felt, that something was missing. In their opinion it all sounded to pedestrian. Finally guitarist Andy Summers came along with the guitar part, he had worked out. “Suddenly it all made sense. It seemed like the guitar part was the trick.”

Stewart Copeland in a live show in Marseille. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

To provide the drum sound with more liveliness, producer Hugh Padgham had the idea to record Copeland’s drum part in the studio’s dining room, where the gabled ceiling and the reflective wooden floor would achieve some special sound effects. While it was the best for the song, the whole thing was less delectable for Copeland himself. The room  was so hot and he was sweating so much, they had to tape the drum sticks to his hands to prevent them from flying out of his fingers. Also he felt a bit isolated. His only connection to the rest of the band was a video monitor and if nobody pushed the talkback-button, he had to be a lip-reader to receive some feedback for his drum playing.

Still there was this middle part of the song, which sounded incomplete. After Sting had tried to find his part on the piano for hours, he just kept playing the same note and suddenly producer Padgham shouted to him on the talkback: “That’s it!” – The one note effect, that fitted the whole simplicity concept of the song.

All in all it took The Police a lot of experimenting to create the final sound of Every Breath You Take. Regarding the tensions between the band members, it was a hard time for everyone included in the production process. However, despite of or even because of those difficulties Every Breath You Take became one of the band’s biggest hits.

Interesting articles on Every Breath You Take (I took my information mainly from those):
Mix-online April 2003
Sound On Sound March 2004

Behind the song: Africa

David Paich on the keyboard on the Toto IV World Tour (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

This month it’s been 30 years that the classic everlasting song Africa by Toto reached the top of the Billboard charts. On the occasion of that anniversary Rock Cellar Magazine had an interesting interview with Toto keyboardist David Paich, who wrote the song together with drummer Jeff Porcaro and delivers insight into the creation process of Africa.

Africa is the song everybody relates to Toto, and I don’t know anybody, who doesn’t like or even love that unique piece of music. So it’s hard to believe, that Africa was almost cut from the album Toto IV and would have never been released at all. It was different from everything Toto had done before and even band members thought, it wouldn’t become a hit. “It’s not what young people are listening to.” Guitarist Steve Lukather even said: “If Africa becomes a hit, I’ll run naked down the streets of Hollywood Boulevard.” And here we go, 30 years later, Africa still being played on every radio station.

To me the song always created a feeling of freedom and those drums and the poetic lyrics made pictures of Africa appear in my mind automatically. In the interview Paich also reveals what inspired him to those lines rich of images. It was at a Catholic prep school with a lot of brothers who did missionary work in Africa, where he heard one of them say “I blessed the rains down in Africa”. The rest of the story were ideas he had as a kid and impressions he collected from reading books,  National Geographic articles and seeing pictures of Africa. Drummer Jeff Porcaro, who contributed much to creation of this African feeling, was inspired by a group of African drummers at the New York World’s Fair, who made huge impression on him as an 11-year-old boy.

For many other astonishing facts – for example how the lyrics and the melody for the chorus came to Paich in some kind of musical epiphany – read the full interview here.

 

http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x7dld_toto-africa_music?search_algo=2#.UR2DZx003IU