I was about 4 when The Righteous Brothers had their first big hit with You’ve Lost That Lovin’ Feeling. Along with The Beatles, and Elvis, The Righteous Brothers made up an important part of my early musical landscape. Billy Joel would have been 16 at the time of that first hit. It seems obvious to me that The Righteous Brothers were important to his musical upbringing, too. How can I say that with such certainty? Well, in 2003, when The Righteous Brothers were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, they asked Billy Joel to introduce them. Why would they do that? It had a lot to do with Joel’s song, Until the Night.

Until the Night is from Billy Joel’s 1978 album 52nd Street. Out of his 20-year career and dozens upon dozens of songs, Until the Night is easily my favorite. Joel has been very open about the inspiration for the song: The Righteous Brothers and the “Wall of Sound” created by Phil Spector.

Let’s start with The Righteous Brothers. Bill Medley (baritone) and Bobby Hatfield (tenor) came together after singing with other groups. A mutual friend suggested that they should sing together. According to Hatfield, the name Righteous Brothers came while they were performing before a group of African American Marines. The Marines would shout, “That was righteous, brothers!” and the name stuck.

Their first big hit came in 1964 with You’ve Lost That Lovin’ Feeling under Phil Spector’s production. The Righteous Brothers had an on and off again career, with many hits, including another favorite of mine: Soul and Inspiration. While Bill Medley still performs as The Righteous Brothers, Bobby Hatfield died in 2003, so he is performing with another tenor.

Phil Spector is an interesting . . . character. He was at one time the single most important record producer in the nation. He started the idea that the studio was an important instrument in itself. And he pioneered the Wall of Sound. As an example: he would have a piano, an electric piano, and a harpsichord all playing the same part. Could you, listening to it, pick out the individual instruments? No. But the texture of the finished sound would be fuller than the solo instruments. Spector called it a Wagnerian approach to producing. (After Richard Wagner, on opera composer from the late 1800s, well-known for huge, bombastic productions – and for a lot more, but that’s another blog!)

By 1981, Spector had faded out of the music business and had become something of a recluse. However, he blasted forward into public notice in 2003, when an actress named Lana Clarkson was found dead of a gunshot wound in his home. Following a trial in 2008, Spector was found guilty of murder and is currently serving his sentence in California. He will be eligible for parole in 2025.

Well, that brought the mood down quite a bit, didn’t it?

Let’s get back to Until the Night.

I never ask you where you go
After I leave you in the morning
We go our different ways to separate situations
It’s not that easy anymore
 
Today I do what must be done
I give my time to total strangers
But now it feels as though the day goes on forever
More than it ever did before
 
(Chorus)
Until the night, until the night
I just might make it
Until the night, until the night
When I see you again
 
Now you’re afraid that we have changed
And I’m afraid we’re getting older
So many broken hearts, so many lonely faces
So many lovers come and gone
 
I’ll have my fears like every man
You’ll have your tears like every woman
Today we’ll be unsure, is this what we believe in
And wonder how can we go on  (to Chorus)
 
When the sun goes down
And the day is over
And the last of the light has gone
As they pour into the street
I will be getting closer
 As the cars turn their headlights on
 As they’re closing it down
I’m gonna open it up
And while they’re going to sleep
We’ll just be starting to touch
I’m just beginning to feel
I’m just beginning to give
I’m just beginning to feel
I’m just beginning to live
Before I leave you again
Before the light of dawn
Before this evening can end
I have been waiting so long  (to Chorus)
 
This is a song about a couple that have been together for a few years. They are still very much in love. During the day, they each go to their own, outside lives. But, at night, they are together again. It is no surprise that Bill Medley covered this song in his 1981 album Sweet Thunder. It really does have the feel of the early Righteous Brothers hits like Soul and Inspiration or You’ve Lost That Lovin’ Feeling combined with the Spector Wall of Sound.
 
What is your favorite Billy Joel song? Or how about The Righteous Brothers? Let me know in the comments below. I’ll be playing some of my favorites this week on my Minnich Music FaceBook page this week, so be sure to check them out.
 
Until next time!

I remember when rock was young
Me and Suzie had so much fun
Holding hands and skimming stones
Had an old gold Chevy and a place of my own
 
But the biggest kick I ever got
Was doing a thing called the Crocodile Rock
While the other kids were Rocking Round the Clock
We were hopping and bopping to the Crocodile Rock
 
(Chorus)
Well Crocodile Rocking is still something shocking
When your feet just can’t keep still
I never knew me a better time and I guess I never will
Oh, Lawdy mama, those Friday nights
When Suzie wore her dresses tight
And the Crocodile Rocking was out of sight.
 
But the years went by and the rock just died
Suzie went and left me for some foreign guy
Long nights crying by the record machine
Dreaming of my Chevy and my old blue jeans
 
But they’ll never kill the thrills we got
Burning up to the Crocodile Rock
Learning fast as the weeks went past
We really thought the Crocodile Rock would last   (to Chorus)
 
That is Elton John’s Crocodile Rock from 1972. Some of the other songs that I’ve written about have one song that was the inspiration: Here, There and Everywhere was inspired by God Only Knows, Killing Me Softly by Empty Chairs. Crocodile Rock was inspired by most of the music from Elton John’s youth. Yup, pretty much all of it. Elton was born in 1947, and Bernie Taupin, his lyricist, was born in 1950. The songs that have direct ties to Crocodile Rock are primarily from the late 1950s to the early 1960s. Some of them are pretty obvious. Bill Haley and His Comets’ Rock Around the Clock is even mentioned in the lyrics.

Some get a little less blatant. There is an entire genre of music from the 1950s that had the falsetto la-la-las. Del Shannon’s Cry Myself to Sleep from 1962 has a lot in common with Crocodile Rock. The structure of the verse is very similar, and the high-pitched las are just as annoying. (Don’t get me wrong: I LOVE Crocodile Rock. But the falsetto las are very, very annoying.)

Bill Haley and His Comets has another reference in this song. Not only is his Rock Around the Clock sung about, but the title is probably a riff on his See You Later, Alligator.

I was surprised to find that there had been a plagiarism lawsuit brought against Elton and Bernie. In 1974, suit was brought by Buddy Kaye for a song he’d written called Speedy Gonzales. Speedy was recorded by Pat Boone in 1961. (Do not bother listening. That is 2 ½ minutes that I’ll never get back.) The song is notable for the fact that it used the voice of Mel Blanc, the voice of Speedy in cartoons dating back to his first appearance in Cat-Tails for Two back in 1953. The wording is a little odd: Elton and Bernie “illegally incorporated chords from Speedy Gonzales which produced a falsetto tone into the Crocodile song.” I’m not entirely sure what that means. But they settled out of court.

Crocodile Rock was Elton John’s first number one hit in the US. He has called it “disposable pop.” Bernie Taupin has said that he would rather be remembered for things like Candle in the Wind or Empty Garden. I even read that DJs came to hate this song. It was just too catchy. And it still is.
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My favorite version is the one from Elton’s appearance on The Muppet Show, singing in a swamp with muppet Crocodiles singing the annoying la’s. I could only find one version of the song that was not by Elton John, and that was from the soundtrack to Gnomeo and Juliet. So, this week I will be playing some other Elton John songs on my Minnich Music FaceBook page this week, so be sure to check them out.
 
Until next time!

Way back in 1975, the Rolling Stones came out with a song called Its Only Rock and Roll (But I Like It).  (David Bowie sang back-up on the recording!) A young singer/songwriter heard the song and got annoyed. He felt that Mick Jagger had been hanging out with too many wealthy, titled people, and was making something of an apology for Rock and Roll.

That young singer was named Alan Merrill. Alan was lead singer and bassist of a British band called Arrows. Alan is actually American, but everybody else was British and England was where the band was based. As they got more established, they hired another bassist and Alan became the front man. When he no longer had his instrument holding him down, Alan was obviously heavily influenced by Mick Jagger: strutting about the stage, shaking his little tushy. Perhaps that is why he took the implied message in Its Only Rock and Roll (But I Like It) so personally.

Arrows should have gone farther than they did. They had a 2-season TV show in England. But, because of in-fighting between their manager and their producer, they did not put out a single album during the run of their show.

Despite this, Alan wrote I Love Rock and Roll, and the band performed it on their show. Joan Jett was touring England with the band The Runaways in 1976, and she heard the song on TV. She wanted to record it, but the rest of the band was not as taken with the song as Joan was.

Time passed and The Runaways went their separate ways. In 1979, Joan recorded I Love Rock and Roll with two members of the Sex Pistols: Steve Jones and Paul Cook. The song became the B-side of a single with the old Leslie Gore hit from 1963: You Don’t Own Me. (I still love the version of that song from the end of the movie The First Wives Club.) Finally, in 1981, now with her own band The Blackhearts, Joan re-recorded the song and gave us the version that we all know and love.

It is a little different when you take the song from the male perspective and put it into the female. In both it’s about a pick-up. But, having the woman be the pursuer instead of the pursued made it empowering for women. In Arrows’ version, it starts with the chorus, thus making it clearer that the I Love Rock and Roll part is the song that is playing on the juke box. (I’ve been listening to this song for almost 40 years and never put that together! I feel a little dumb.)

I saw him dancin’ there by the record machine
I knew he must a been about seventeen.
The beat was goin’ strong,
Playin’ my favorite song.
And I could tell it wouldn’t be long
Till he was with me, yeah me, singin’
 
(Chorus)
I love rock ‘n’ roll,
So put another dime in the jukebox, baby.
I love rock ‘n’ roll
So, come an’ take your time an’ dance with me.
 
He smiled so I got up and asked for his name.
That don’t matter, he said,
‘Cause it’s all the same.
Said, can I take you home where we can be alone.
And next we were movin’ on
He was with me, yeah me, singin’ (to Chorus)
(Then there are a few repeats.)
 
In the years since there have been a lot of additional covers of this song.  Tiny Tim! (Not at all what I expected. Somehow very disturbing.) Britney Spears. Of course, there’s Weird Al’s I Love Rocky Road. And just this past December 2019, a British YouTuber called LadBaby recorded I Love Sausage Rolls as part of a fund-raiser for an organization dealing with hunger in the UK. The original song has even been recorded in Finnish.

In spite of all this, the song is irrevocably connected to Joan Jett. Yet, when she was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, she did not perform this song. You would have thought this was perfect song to sing then, but she didn’t.
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What is your favorite version of I Love Rock and Roll? Should this be a song of feminine empowerment?  I’ll be playing some versions of this song this week on my Minnich Music FaceBook page this week, so be sure to check them out.
 
Until next time!