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Today’s episode is about a song that might make you wonder who—or what—is watching you. But despite what the title might suggest, George Orwell and Big Brother don’t really have anything to do with it. Alan Parsons was no stranger to a recording studio by the mid-1970s. He had worked on the Beatles’ Abbey Road and Let It Be, and served as an engineer on Pink Floyd’s The Dark Side of the Moon. Then, while sitting in the canteen at Abbey Road Studios one day, Parsons met songwriter and session pianist Eric Woolfson, who offered to manage his career. The partnership eventually turned into something more: the Alan Parsons Project. Their first album, Tales of Mystery and Imagination, arrived in 1976, and was followed by a string of concept albums. I, Robot gave them “I Wouldn’t Want to Be Like You” and “Don’t Let It Show”; Pyramid turned its attention to the pyramids of Giza; Eve explored the problems women faced in a male-dominated world; and The Turn of a Friendly Card ventured into the world of gambling and gamblers. Along the way, the Alan Parsons Project became increasingly successful, even though it wasn’t really a conventional “band” at all. Then, in 1982, came both an album and a single called “Eye in the Sky.” The title certainly sounds Orwellian, but Parsons and Woolfson denied that connection. Woolfson did, however, remember the surveillance cameras he had seen watching gamblers from above during trips to Las Vegas. And the song itself? That “eye in the sky” turns out to have a much more personal reason for keeping watch. Parsons apparently didn’t think they had a particularly big hit on their hands—in fact, he bet guitarist Ian Bairnson one British pound that the song would flop. Somebody probably should have collected on that bet: “Eye in the Sky” became the Alan Parsons Project’s only American Top 10 hit, reaching #3 on the Billboard Hot 100. So where did that title really come from? Who—or what—is the “eye”? What does an NBA dynasty have to do with all of this? And how did a song about betrayal eventually get transformed into one about compassion and support? Let’s take a look at “Eye in the Sky” by the Alan Parsons Project.

I don’t remember if I mentioned this before, but when I first launched this podcast, I recorded the first four or five episodes and then decided that I hated them, so I recorded them again, and that’s what went out to the world. Now, every podcaster looks at their first few episodes and they cringe at how those episodes sound, and I’m no exception to that, but the purpose of re-doing a bunch of these older episodes is to bring them a little more in line with changes I’ve made in formatting and program elements. So today we’re going all the way back to Episode One, to talk about 10cc’s breakout hit from 1975: where that funky background sound came from, what the title is about, and the rumors about how the band got its name. Also: listen to the episode before reading the last paragraph. During the episode, I noted that the song peaked at Number 2 on the Billboard Hot 100 Chart, and that in each of the three weeks it spent in that position, there was a different #1 song. Here are the three songs: When it first reached #2 the week of July 26, 1975, the #1 song was “The Hustle” by Van McCoy.       For the week of August 2, 1975, The Eagles’ “One of These Nights” was at #1.     And finally, on my oldest daughter’s (negative seventeenth) birthday, it was “Jive Talkin’” by the Bee Gees. As a 12-year-old that year, I was pretty immersed in pop music and I’d look at the Top 20 chart that was published in Long Island’s Newsday every week. I kind of remember that summer being one in which the charts churned a lot of change from week to week. So remaining in one position, even if it was #2, for several weeks, was still a bit of an event.

Despite the allusion in the title, today’s song has no spiritual content or religious references. It’s just a description of life on the road with a hard rock band that’s paying its dues. And, as the band members would tell you, they were–and are–a rock band, not a punk band, thank you very much. AC/DC was formed in 1973 by brothers Malcolm and Angus Young in their hometown of Sydney, Australia. The band name came from an electrical adapter on a sewing machine owned by their sister and not, dear reader, from the street slang that hints at one’s sexual orientation. Within two months, the brothers Young were in the studio at their first recording sessions, and five months after that’s they were touring Australia supporting and opening for Lou Reed. Their first lead singer, Bon Scott, joined the band in time to record their first studio album, High Voltage, in November 1974. That record was released in a limited market at first, but it did give the band its first Top 20 hit (“Baby, Please Don’t Go”) and their first radio play in the United States. The follow-up, T.N.T., led to an international deal with Atlantic Records in 1976. The next five years were undoubtedly the golden years for the band. Their third offering, Dirty Deeds Done Dirt Cheap, was released in late 1976, and the band toured extensively around Australia, Europe and the Americas for the better part of the next three years. Put yourself in their shoes — 4 albums in as many years, with each album requiring at least 128 concerts a year — and you’d start to think of the road as being hellish. And that’s the origin of the song we dive into in this episode.

And once again my voice has a case of Peter Brady. I need to quit recording late at night. We have a variety of diss tracks here for you, all but one of them dating back to before they were even called such a thing, before the rise of hip-hop music. This isn’t to take away from the overall impact of hip-hop on modern music but rather to demonstrate that, once again, what came before can have an influence on what we have now. Kitty Wells walked so that George Harrison could run, and all that. But this was, in fact, a fun episode to research and write, and I think we may need to take another dive into this subgenre of music in a future episode. Click here for a transcript of this episode. Click here to become a Patron of the show. Patrons get a newsletter about 46 times a year and oftentimes a sneak peek at episodes or videos we put together.

Today’s episode is about a song that was written just up the hill from where I was born and in the same town where my wife and and I were wed. So it most definitely “strikes close to home.” Neil Young had emerged from the great north woods of Canada into the public limelight in the mid–1960s. He joined up with Stephen Stills and Richie Furay to create the Buffalo Springfield, an LA-based band that asked the musical question “Stop, hey, what’s that sound” before disintegrating – but not before Young himself had quit and rejoined the band several times. Then, in 1969, he made a self-titled solo album that had great songs, including “The Loner,” (one of my personal favorites) but which didn’t sell well. And then Young really came into his own. His second solo album got him some much needed publicity, and he hit a creative chord with an ensemble of garage musicians that he dubbed Crazy Horse. His next stop was to sign on with Crosby, Stills, and Nash (wherein he added his own last name to the group) and played the Woodstock festival with them. His participation in the CSNY album Deja Vu brought him both acclaim and paychecks, which he used to purchase a sprawling ranch in the mountains of the San Francisco Bay Area.  One day, Young took a ride around his newly purchased estate with the property’s caretaker, who was at least forty years older than Young at the time. The two men had a long conversation, and the result of that little open-air chat became the basis of one of Young’s most enduring acoustic songs. Let’s find out how the song came together, who played on it, and how the listening public took to it.

One of the things that always amazed me about the songs that became big hits in the pop era between the 1950s and the 1990s was the sheer variety of musical styles that topped the charts. When doing research for this show I went into a bit of a spiral looking at Billboard charts for the late 1970s, and I got stuck on the summer of 1978, with the amazing wealth of songs that were in the top 20 at the time. Some of the songs, of course have fallen into the mists of time because they don’t get the oldies airplay anymore, and that’s a shame because there’s still some very good stuff there. This was the Top 20 chart for the week ending August 19, 1978 according to The Real American Top 40 Wiki page: Commodores – Three Times A Lady (↔) Frankie Valli – Grease (↔) Donna Summer – Last Dance (↔) Rolling Stones – Miss You (↔) Foreigner – Hot Blooded (↔) A Taste Of Honey – Boogie Oogie Oogie (↔) Pablo Cruise – Love Will Find A Way (↔) Barry Manilow – Copacabana (↔) Walter Egan – Magnet And Steel (↔) Andy Gibb – An Everlasting Love (↔) Olivia Newton-John – Hopelessly Devoted To You (↔) Joe Walsh – Life’s Been Good (↔) Toby Beau – My Angel Baby (↔) Atlanta Rhythm Section – I’m Not Gonna Let It Bother Me Tonight (↔) Evelyn King – Shame (↑4) Exile – Kiss You All Over (↑2) Steve Martin – King Tut (↔) Chris Rea – Fool (If You Think It’s Over) (↑3) Earth Wind & Fire – Got To Get You Into My Life (↑10) Jackson Browne – The Load-Out/Stay (↔) Pretty much all of these songs, I wouldn’t mind listening to again. And that’s not always the case with songs at this level of the charts. (“Having My Baby,” anyone?) We have here a mix of disco, R&B, retro pop, ballads, a live track, a novelty song, a soundtrack title,  about a half-dozen well-established acts and three one-hit wonders (I’m not counting Steve Martin there because it’s a novelty). And they’re all at varying levels of “good”! All of this is prologue to the fact that Stevie Nicks was in the thick of the music industry for a three-year period, either as a writer, a lead or a backup singer. All of which cemented her in the musical firmament. If she’d done nothing else after 1979, she’d still be fondly remembered. But in addition to being all the things above, she was also a muse for several artists, much of which we’re covering in this episode. I bumped into some problems with regard to quantifying songs about her, but I did my best and I’d be curious to know what you may think I’ve overlooked, because there were a few I did research on and got nowhere.

Hidy, friends and neighbors. Good to be partnering up with Claude on another podcasting project! This episode is about a song whose title vaguely sounds like the result of a chemical spill, but which is actually a classic piece of rockabilly. John Fogerty and his brother Tom were natives of Northern California, and their family vacations often were to a cabin in Yolo County, just west of Sacramento. That cabin was next to both a lake and a creek, and the Fogerty boys would play in and around that creek during vacations. And yes, you’ve guessed it, the water there did have a greenish tint because of algae and other natural phenomena.  Coincidentally, Green River was John’s favorite flavor of soda pop as well (though I’m not sure I would drink anything with that name these days). Fast forward a few years to the mid 1960s, and John and Tom, along with their buddies Stu Cook and Doug Clifford, are in a local band called the Golliwogs. They picked a new name in January 1968, shortly after they got their record contract, and were thereafter known as Creedence Clearwater Revival. They followed the natural route of local gigs, then national tours, and then record releases. The song titles are familiar: Susie Q, Bad Moon Rising, Born on the Bayou, Proud Mary (which Claude covered on an episode of How Good It Is a while back, and then the song that hearkened back to John’s salad days at that creek in Yolo County.   Give it a listen to see how Roy Orbison rubbed off on the boys from El Cerrito, and how the song fits into the overall CCR legacy. Click here for a transcript of this episode.  Click here to become a Patron of the show.

Ladies and Gentlemen, the queen of them all. Pattie Boyd was the inspiration for a huge number of songs. Some of them went to the top of the charts, some of them weren’t released as singles, but nearly all of the songs about her are well-known, and not just because they’re about her; because they’re actually pretty darn good. And the crazy part is that all of them came from two men: George Harrison and Eric Clapton. There’s a song in Clapton’s catalog that could have easily been about her if you try to read into the lyrics, but it’s more coincidence than anything else, since it wasn’t written by Clapton. But it’s also quite possible that the lyrical content is one of the things that gave it its appeal to Clapton. Who knows. When I return to this topic (in two episodes), we’ll talk about the other contender for the big title. If you’re a Patron of the show, you’ve already gotten this episode in your Patreon feed. Feel free to listen again here, if you’re so inclined. Newsletter should be back next week; I’m still readjusting my work flow. You can click here to become a Patron of the show. Click here for a transcript of this episode.

Where have I been? Life, Cousin. Life got in the way. A lot of things sidetracked me, and even though I was keeping the feed for this show active, I still had several moments of “Yeah! Gonna get back to it soon!” alongside an equal number of “why bother?” moments. I’ve also been working on a different podcast project with Mike Messner, who you might remember from a couple of Gordon Lightfoot episodes we did here. I talk about it during the episode, but you can check it out here. Mike convinced me that there was still more to say; in addition he wanted to help me say it. In addition, I wanted to move the show a little closer to its original educational roots. There’s more about that during the episode, too. So, bigger picture: Mike is going to take on some of the hosting duties, and I’m going to be doing a mix of new shows and a re-work of old shows. We have roughly the next 20 or so episodes mapped out, and while Mike will be writing and producing his own stuff, I’ll be reviewing scripts and dealing with final production, plus I’ll be dealing with the show notes (the stuff you read here) for the time being. Have a listen, get The Rest Of The StoryTM, and let’s re-light this candle!

Of all the people in the Beatles’ inner circle, Jane Asher is perhaps the most mysterious. Not because she’s reclusive–far from it, in fact. Jane Asher has spent lots of time on stage and on screens large and small from the time she was a  child. But other than newspaper and magazine articles, and maybe a few video clips which survive from the 1960s, there isn’t a lot of first-hand knowledge about her relationship with Paul McCartney. For about five years she was his girlfriend, and she had a front-row view of the beginnings of Beatlemania, the madness of touring, the changes in the band’s sound, the death of Brian Epstein, the psychedelic period, even the visit to India. But she finds it insulting when people ask her about those days. And even though she’s written several books, both fiction and non-fiction, none of them are about The Beatles. She may be the only person who’s had prolonged contact with the band who hasn’t written a book about it. But Paul McCartney, tunesmith that he is, wrote several songs about Jane Asher. In later years, he’d mostly concede only that they were songs of a personal nature rather than saying something like “It’s about Jane,” possibly as a means of respecting both her and his late wife Linda, but a pretty straight line can be drawn between some of the events in their respective lives and the subject matter of his songs. Click here for a transcript of this episode.  Click here to become a Patron of the show. Paid-level Patrons get a newsletter about 48 times per year (I do take the occasional week off); Free-level Patrons get it two weeks later. So why not join? What’s to lose?

In case you haven't heard, we're on a little bit of a journey, meeting various women who have had an influence on multiple pop songs. In today's episode we'll be visiting Rosanna Arquette. The interesting thing here is that whether or not the songs in this episode are about Rosanna has been an on-again, off-again mystery. For a while they're not, then they are again, and maybe, maybe not. Personally I think the evidence is there, although I can accept the explanation that there are other models for one song and there's a deliberate ambiguity in the other, because of the nature of the music that was influencing the singer. At any rate, there's a terrific storm going on tonight and I've already lost power briefly one time; let me get this out before there's another outage. Click here for a transcript of this episode.  Click here to become a Patron of the show. Paid members get a newsletter 48 times per year and ad-free episodes. Free members get the newsletter on a delayed basis.

For the next several episodes, we're going to take a look at the women who inspired some of the Rock Era's most iconic songs. There will be six episodes in this series; five of them will concentrate on a specific woman, each of whom inspired multiple songs. The sixth episode will look at several women who each inspired a single song. A couple of the women I've chosen will be fairly obvious but I'm hoping a couple will come as a surprise to you. And this episode, I hope, is one of the surprises. We'll be taking a look at Renee Fladen-Kamm, who was just Renee Fladen back in the day. This young woman inspired three songs, all with a similar theme to them. Two of the songs became big hits for the artist, and the third...not so much. But there's a pretty good cover that I mention during the episode. Click here for a transcript of this episode. Click here to become a Patron of the show. Patrons receive a weekly newsletter about 48 times a year (I dunno, I don't count, but I don't take a lot of weeks off), plus bragging rights and an advance release of the episode, so you get it ad-free. How's that for a deal!

After this many episodes, it gives me a moment of "Huh, isn't that interesting" when I start writing the post for an episode and discover that I haven't covered a song from that particular year before. In this case, that year would be 1956. In retrospect, that shouldn't be a surprise, given that we're reaching waaay back into the early days of the Pop music era. But it's still a fun little statistic, regardless. "In the Still of the Night" was originally "In the Still of the Nite," partly because they didn't want this song to be confused with a 1936 song written by Cole Porter and recorded several times over the years. The other reason is that it was a little bit of a trend to spell "Nite" like that. (See also The Dells' "Oh What a Nite".) Later on the spelling changed to the more conventional style, and you'd often see "(I'll Remember)" tacked on. Why it's "I'll remember" and not "I remember", I have no idea. This wasn't relevant to the broader story, but in 1986 Ronnie Milsap recorded a song called "Lost in the Fifties Tonight", where he recounts some fond memories from listening to this song. As part of the chorus he actually sings a few bars of this song.  That song went to #1 on the Billboard Country Chart and earned Milsap a Grammy for Best Country Male Performance. And finally, I didn't promise this during the episode, but here's the song from the Trivia Question (go listen to the episode first!):  This link doesn't have any actual video to it, but do a search and you'll catch a lot of fun videos associated with the song. You won't even mind hearing it repeatedly because it's a genuine banger. Click here for a transcript of this episode. Click here to become a Patron of the show. Patrons get a newsletter about 48 times a year (I never counted, but I don't skip weeks often) and now they get advance access to ad-free episodes.

This is an episode I wrote in the Southern Studio, so I may  have been in a better mood than usual to write it than I ordinarily am, given  the subject matter. When Blue Öyster Cult first got together, they were a college band from Stony Brook, New York. That's not far from where I grew up. Oddly, none of the band's original members are from Long Island. Two of them grew up in New  York City, one in upstate NY and the last was born in Alabama but moved to the Island as a child. Go figure. They took on the name Soft White Underbelly first and used that from 1967-1969. Then they caught a bad review for a show and decided to change their name. After a few permutations they landed on Blue Öyster Cult, which they didn't really like. But the fact is, they didn't care enough at that point to come up with anything else. I touched on this briefly in the episode itself, but it's pretty clear that the band members were still pretty fond of "Soft White Underbelly". Oftentimes when they played smaller clubs around the NY Metro area, that's the name they'd use in those clubs. So when fans of BOC saw an ad in the local newspapers touting that band in the 1970s and 80s, they knew they were actually in for a Blue Öyster Cult show. "Don't Fear the Reaper" is notable for several different reasons. It was a new recording studio and they experimented with their sound in different ways. That would include having Buck Dharma sing the lead. (Dharma is the lead singer on "Godzilla" and "Burnin' For You", so they may have hit on something there.) You'll hear about some of the bells and whistles they use. And yes, you'll hear a little bit about Saturday Night Live and how they feel about it. Click here for a transcript of this episode. Click here to become a Patron of the show. Patrons get a newsletter about 48 times a year (I never counted, but I don't skip weeks often) and now they get advance access to ad-free episodes.

By 1968, Glen Campbell had moved from session musician to a star in his own right. His single "By the Time I Get to Phoenix," written by Jimmy Webb, was a huge hit for him. So when Campbell decided he needed another song, he turned back to Webb and asked him for another song. For whatever reason, he asked Webb to make it a song about a specific location. Webb, at that time, was in the business of writing as many songs as possible about his ex, a woman named Susan Horton. (Coincidentally, Jim Holvay was also spending a lot of time writing songs about a woman named Susan, go figure.) Susan Horton was at the heart of "Phoenix" and "MacArthur Park, which had just been released when Campbell came calling again. So he cranked out yet another song ostensibly about Susan. That song was "Wichita Lineman." Now, Webb wasn't as obvious about Susan as Holvay was, but in all of these songs you can hear some sense of loss and longing, so it's pretty clear that he had it bad for her. And between Webb's nearly-finished work and the production values that Campbell and producer/arranger Al De Lory, before long they had a genuine masterpiece on their hands. And honest to god, why haven't I covered this song back when the show was still in single digits? What else haven't I covered that really needs some attention? Drop me an email  at [email protected]! Click here for a transcript of this episode.  Click here to become a Patron of the show. Patrons get a newsletter about 48 times a year, plus a few other goodies from time to time.