How Good It Is

Brothers Duane and Gregg Allman had been playing music since childhood, and by the late 1960s, Duane had become a sought-after session guitarist, working with artists like Aretha Franklin and Wilson Pickett. But he had bigger ambitions: a band featuring two lead guitarists and two drummers. With Dickey Betts, Berry Oakley, Butch Trucks, and Jaimoe Johanson joining the brothers, the Allman Brothers Band took shape in Jacksonville, Florida, in 1969. The group’s first two studio albums struggled commercially, but their second, Idlewild South, contained a song destined to become a Southern rock classic. Gregg Allman wrote most of “Midnight Rider” while rehearsing in Macon, Georgia, but couldn’t quite finish the lyrics. Enter roadie Robert Kim Payne, who supplied the missing lines. Once the song was complete, the musicians were eager to record it. Unfortunately, the studio was locked, and nobody was willing to open it. What happened next probably wasn’t in the rental agreement. “Midnight Rider” tells the story of a man determined to keep moving despite the obstacles in his path. Although the original recording wasn’t a hit, the song eventually found success through versions by Gregg Allman himself, Willie Nelson, and even a Jamaican reggae singer. How did this late-night creation become an enduring classic? And what does it have to do with professional wrestling and a controversial insurance commercial? Join Mike Messner for the story of “Midnight Rider.” Or, don’t. We’re not your boss.  During the Trivia Answer, Mike mentioned Episode 159, which is Claude’s interview with The Yardbirds’ Jim McCarty. Here’s a quick link to that episode.

Somehow I think I undersold it when I called “Blue Suede Shoes” a game-changer. I think about stuff like this a lot when it comes to songs of this nature that I was too young to hear when it first came out: that opening drumbeat on “Like a Rolling Stone.” Grace Slick bursting out of the speakers on “Somebody to Love.” Dick Dale’s Mideast-inspired tones on “Misirlou”. And even the songs that maybe didn’t sound like anything especially new at first, but suddenly turned into a new experience, like “Whiter Shade of Pale” or “Smoke on the Water,” which turned into the most-sung riff of all time, at least until “Seven Nation Army” came along. (Side Note: I have to admit, of the songs I’ve linked here, I’m actually a little surprised at how long ago I recorded those episodes. But the fact remains that there are songs which, whether right away or just a little ways down the road, change the landscape of popular music. And “Blue Suede Shoes” was one of the first, “Rock Around the Clock” notwithstanding. (Another side note: a couple of days ago I had to go out in the rain and got my sneakers wet, which was unfortunate because we had to go back out a short time later. Fortunately the rain had subsided but my shoes were still pretty damp. My wife reminded me that I own a pair of blue suede Rockports and maybe I should wear those, so I did. How about those, baby?)  

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.