At Bella's request, I've reposted this for tonight's Blog Fever:

 

I’ve always been musical by nature.   I spend a large portion of every day singing songs, or trying to think of songs that will make my friends and coworkers smile or sing along.  I started playing piano by ear at the age of four or five.  Sadly, I never learned how to read the notes; I would just have my piano teacher play the song through once, and I’d play it back to her.  As a result, my piano teacher just assumed I was reading the sheet music.  My mother, who also plays piano and heard me practice daily, was aware that I couldn’t read notes, and used to get into heated arguments with my piano teacher about my inability to read sheet music.  To this day, I can only read notes by using the mnemonics Every Good Boy Deserves Fudge and F.A.C.E. and then counting alphabetically from the notes I can read because of the mnemonic to the notes I can’t read.

 

I don’t know what it is that makes me love a particular piece of music.  Sometimes the first time I hear a song it’s like meeting your soul mate.  Somehow the tune was already in your brain; to paraphrase Tom Hanks in Sleepless in Seattle “It’s like coming home, only a home I’ve never known.”  Other times I hear a song four hundred times before I can tolerate it, and then I grow to love it; similar to your girlfriend’s ugly little puppy that you can’t stand at first, but over time simply ingratiates itself into your heart.

 

Lyrics also fascinate me.  A particularly poignant or witty turn of phrase can cause me to love a song immediately.  The lyrics can be especially profound, or just echo a sentiment I’ve felt.  In some cases the song and lyrics become a historical bookmark to me, they bring me back to a particular place and time that I love, or a specific memory.

 

As the years go by, I’ve started to really enjoy the stories behind songs:  either the driving motivation in their creation, or the anecdote detailing how the song was written.  I’ve decided to write up a couple of my favorite stories behind the making of a particular song.  Once or twice the story behind the song drastically changed my interpretation of the lyrics.  Mostly though, the stories just make me smile when I hear the tune.  I’d love it if anyone so inclined would contribute their own favorite stories behind a particular piece of music.

 

Song 1:  The Beatles – Yesterday

 

 

 

Edited from Wikipedia:

According to biographers of McCartney and the Beatles, McCartney composed the entire melody in a dream one night in his room at the Wimpole Street home of his then girlfriend Jane Asher and her family.  Upon waking, he hurried to a piano, turned on a tape recorder, and played the tune to avoid letting it slip into the recesses of his mind.

McCartney's initial concern was that he had subconsciously plagiarised someone else's work (known as cryptomnesia).  As he put it, "For about a month I went round to people in the music business and asked them whether they had ever heard it before."Eventually it became like handing something in to the police. I thought if no-one claimed it after a few weeks then I could have it".

Upon being convinced that he had not robbed anybody of his melody, McCartney began writing lyrics to suit it.  As Lennon and McCartney were known to do at the time, a substitute working lyric, entitled "Scrambled Eggs", was used for the song until something more suitable was written.  In his biography, "Many Years From Now", McCartney wrote: "So first of all I checked this melody out, and people said to me, 'No, it's lovely, and I'm sure it's all yours.'  It took me a little while to allow myself to claim it, but then like a prospector I finally staked my claim; stuck a little sign on it and said, 'Okay, it's mine!' It had no words. I used to call it 'Scrambled Eggs'."

During the shooting of Help!, a piano was placed on one of the stages where filming was being conducted.  McCartney would take advantage of this opportunity to perform "Scrambled Eggs" accompanied by the piano.  Richard Lester, the director, was greatly annoyed by this, and eventually lost his temper, telling McCartney to finish writing the song, or he would have the piano removed.  McCartney's original lyrics were, "Scrambled eggs, Oh, baby how I love your legs."

Lennon later indicated that the song had been around for a while before:

McCartney said the breakthrough with the lyrics came during a trip to Portugal in May 1965:

Song 2:  The BoomTown Rat’s – Tell Me Why I Don’t Like Mondays

This song was always an anthem for me as a kid.  I hated school, and Monday morning meant five straight days of it.  I never really paid attention to the verses of the song, I just belted out “TELL ME WHY, I don’t like Mondays!” at the top of my lungs.  To me, this song was along the same lines as Manic Monday by the Bangles... a fun little way to rebel against the inherent crappiness of a Monday.

About five years ago, I heard the song again, and actually listened carefully to the verses.  I was shocked by the lyrics, and jumped on the internet to find out more about the song.  Apparently the Boomtown Rat’s wrote this song in response to the following disturbing news story:

On 29 January 1979, 16-year-old Brenda Ann Spencer opened fire on children arriving at Cleveland Elementary School in San Diego from her house across the street, killing two men and wounding eight students and a police officer.   Principal Burton Wragg was attempting to rescue children in the line of fire when he was shot and killed, and custodian Mike Suchar was slain attempting to aid Wragg.

 

Spencer used a rifle her father had given her as a gift (she had wanted a radio).  As to what impelled her into this form of murderous madness, she told a reporter, ''I don't like Mondays. This livens up the day.''

 

The "Mondays" comment was not the only eyebrow-raising declaration to issue from Spencer that day.  According to a report written by the police negotiators who spoke with her during the six-hour standoff, she made such comments to them as ''There was no reason for it, and it was just a lot of fun''; ''It was just like shooting ducks in a pond''; and ''[the children ] looked like a herd of cows standing around, it was really easy pickings.''

 

That Spencer failed to kill any of the children she shot at was attributable to luck rather than any reluctance on her part to take their lives.  The bullet that struck 9-year-old Charles "Cam" Miller missed his heart by about an inch.

 

Spencer pled guilty to two counts of murder and assault with a deadly weapon and was sentenced to 25 years to life in prison.  She has been up for parole four times and has been turned down each time, the last in 2005.  At her first parole hearing she expressed doubt that any of the victims were hit by bullets from her rifle and contended they might have been shot by police.  She also claimed to have been under the influence of alcohol and hallucinogenic drugs at the time of the shootings and asserted prosecutors and her attorney had conspired to fabricate test evidence showing there had been no drugs in her system.  By her third parole hearing she was admitting guilt and expressing remorse but was still contending she had been drunk and high on marijuana laced with PCP the day of her deadly rampage.  She also claimed something new, that she had been beaten and sexually abused by her father, an avowal conspicuously absent from previous records.

 

She is eligible to again apply for parole in 2009.  Those who continue to be troubled by the callousness of Brenda Spencer's crime and concerned by her continued attempts to shift blame for her actions onto anyone or anything else can draw comfort from the knowledge that murderers are rarely granted parole in California.

 

Holy Paradigm-Shift Batman!  My cute little anthem about hating Mondays was really about attempted mass murder, and the incredibly cold, disconcerting comment made by Brenda Spencer to justify her crime.  This is one of the rare times where learning the story motivating the lyrics completely changed my interpretation of the song.    I don’t know how I missed this in the lyrics as a kid; it’s painfully obvious upon reading them:

The silicon chip inside her head
Gets switched to overload
And nobody’s gonna go to school today
She’s gonna make them stay at home
And daddy doesn’t understand it
He always said she was good as gold
And he can see no reasons
'Cos there are no reasons
What reason do you need to be show-ow-ow-ow-own?

Tell me why
I don’t like Mondays
Tell me why
I don’t like Mondays
Tell me why
I don’t like Mondays
I wanna shoo-oo-oo-oo-oo-oot the whole day down

The Telex machine is kept so clean
And it types to a waiting world
And mother feels so shocked
Father’s world is rocked
And their thoughts turn to their own little girl
Sweet 16 ain’t that peachy keen
Now that ain’t so neat to admit defeat
They can see no reasons
'Cos there are no reasons
What reasons do you need?
Oh Oh Oh Oh

Tell me why
I don’t like Mondays
Tell me why
I don’t like Mondays
Tell me why
I don’t like Mondays
I wanna shoo-oo-oo-oo-oo-oot
The whole day down, down, down, shoot it all down

And all the playing's stopped in the playground now
She wants to play with her toys a while
And school's out early and soon we'll be learning
And the lesson today is how to die
And then the bullhorn crackles
And the captain tackles
With the problems and the hows and whys
And he can see no reasons
'Cos there are no reasons
What reason do you need to die, die?
Oh Oh Oh

The silicon chip inside her head
Gets switched to overload
And nobody’s gonna go to school today
She’s gonna make them stay at home
And daddy doesn’t understand it
He always said she was good as gold
And he can see no reasons
'Cos there are no reasons
What reason do you need to be show-ow-ow-ow-own?

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Song 3:  Matchbox Twenty – 3 A.M.

 

 

I always like this song when it first came out, but I had difficulty interpreting the lyrics on my own.  I did a pretty extensive internet search to find out the real story behind the song.  When Rob Thomas, the lead singer of Matchbox Twenty, was in high school his mother was diagnosed with cancer.  Not abnormally for patients diagnosed with cancer, she began drinking to cope with the inherent loneliness and depression associated with a potentially fatal disease.  In the end, the cancer went into remission, but she became an alcoholic.

 

There is an absolutely phenomenal acoustic piano version of this song by Rob Thomas that I couldn’t locate.  I’ve figured out how to play the piano version as an homage to my brother, who passed away this time last year because of drugs/alcohol.  The back-story behind the song somehow makes it appropriate for my brother to me.  My brother always claimed that he couldn’t stop drinking/using drugs because of a medical condition (he had difficulties sleeping, so used the drugs and alcohol to knock himself out nightly).

 

In this song, 3 A.M. represents her drinking (a common closing time for bars in some areas), and the rain is a metaphor for her cancer.  Some of the lines become particularly poignant in light of this:

 

She says it’s all gonna end, it might as well be my fault.

 

-  I can picture the conversation that went along with this line in my head.  I envision Rob Thomas confronting his mother concerned about her budding alcoholism, and this is his mother’s response.  I’m going to die of cancer anyway, so what does it matter if the alcohol kills me?

 

Well I can't help but be scared of it all sometimes.  But the rain's gonna wash away, I believe it.   

 

-  Cancer patients often go through different stages in coping with the disease, and often backtrack to previous stages.  They can oscillate between being frightened and thinking they will beat cancer, often within the same day.

 

The clock on the wall has been stuck at 3 for days and days

 

-  Instead of drinking occasionally to cope, his mother has become a full-blown alcoholic.

 

But outside, it’s stop raining.

 

- The cancer went into remission, but she remains an alcoholic.

 

Song 4:  Phil Collins – In the Air Tonight

 

 

When I first heard ‘In the Air Tonight’, I was fascinated by the song’s macabre theme and how well the music matched the lyrics.  Driving home from work one night, the song came on the radio.  After the song, the DJ recounted the following urban legend about its origins:

 

While at camp as a child, Collins awoke to find his counselor missing.  Looking outside, he saw the counselor standing by the lake doing nothing to help a drowning boy.  Collins, being too far away to help himself, was racked with guilt over the incident.

 

In later years, Collins became obsessed with the counselor, spying on him and watching him at home. Collins sent the man a free front row ticket to his concert and the man, thinking it was strange, but seeing no reason to turn down a great seat to a great concert, attended anyway.  Collins played a few songs into the concert, paying no notice to the man.  Then all of the lights went off, as Collins seemed to be preparing for another song. Two spotlights appeared, one pointing on Collins, who was sitting on a stool off of the stage now in front of a man (the stranger) who had the other spotlight trained on him. Collins proceeded to perform a new song, entitled ‘In the Air Tonight’ seeming to direct it right at the anonymous man.

 

At the point in the song where the drums kick in and the song becomes louder, Collins supposedly threw the stool onto the ground and all the lights went on.  It is presumed that the man left after this song, realizing that Collins was there when he had watched the child drowning.  The rest of the audience had no idea what the whole situation had been about, only suspecting the man had done something to anger Collins to a great degree.

 

This first verse of the song is consistent with the urban legend:

 

I can feel it coming in the air tonight, oh lord
I’ve been waiting for this moment, all my life, oh lord
Can you feel it coming in the air tonight, oh lord, oh lord

Well, if you told me you were drowning
I would not lend a hand
I’ve seen your face before my friend
But I don’t know if you know who I am
Well, I was there and I saw what you did
I saw it with my own two eyes
So you can wipe off the grin, I know where you’ve been
Its all been a pack of lies 

 

I hope all of you have enjoyed these four songs and the stories behind them; I’d like to encourage you to include your own songs and stories.