What shaped rock’s greatest hits? Let’s rewind and look into some of rock music’s greatest hits down the years to find some clarity on the question: What goes into make a hit song? You put in the good work, work on promotions, maybe see how to use market trends as well…but for a song to stay in people’s hearts through out ages takes more. Sometimes it’s the artist’s personal life situation or some hard decisions taken by the band as a whole which includes some risks. Sometimes it is the things beyond anyone’s control.
1. Yesterday, The Beatles (1965)
Album: Help!; Recording Studio: Abbey Road Studios (formerly EMI Recording Studios); Label: Capitol Records
Initially called “Scrambled Eggs” as a joke, as Paul McCartney had said, he was against the idea to record the song initially. The simple reason being they could not think of any other arrangement of the song than a string quartet which was inappropriate for a rock n roll band. Maybe none of them had guessed Yesterday will come in the list of rock’s greatest hits.
Paul McCartney Writes A Song In His Sleep
Paul was living with his then girlfriend -the English actress Jane Asher, and one day he wrote a song in his sleep. “I woke up with a lovely tune in my head. I thought, That’s great, I wonder what that is? There was an upright piano next to me, to the right of the bed by the window. I got out of bed, sat at the piano, found G, found F sharp minor seventh – and that leads you through then to B to E minor, and finally back to G.” In fact, he was so happy with the song, initially he refused to believe he wrote it!
The year was 1965. The Beatles were filming their second movie “Help!”. As director Richard Lester recalls Paul was so obsessed with his song “Scrambled Eggs” all the time, he kept playing it on one of the stage pianos. “It got to the point where I said to him, ‘If you play that bloody song any longer I’ll have the piano taken off stage. Either finish it or give it up!’,” Richard says.
Paul McCartney Finally Completes the Song
Post-filming, Paul finally had the thought about finishing the song. “Scram-ble-d Eggs” finally became “Yes-ter-day” and the rest of the words were quite an easy rhyme.
Although initially he didn’t like the idea, after Paul’s much trusted producer George Martin agreed to work on it, Yesterday finally was complete on a June 17th afternoon. This was the first time the Beatles had an ensemble working for their song but luckily not the last. The rest is history.
One of the Beatles’ most famous songs, the song went on to stay at No 1 in the US charts for four weeks.
2. Piano Man, Billy Joel (1973)
Album: Piano Man; Label: Columbia Records; Recorded at Devonshire Studios in Los Angeles, California
It need not be “9 o’clock on a Saturday” to enjoy classics as these. A fictionalized retelling of Joel’s experiences with people he met as a lounge singer at Los Angeles, beautiful storytelling along with a hauntingly melodious piano makes the song relatable all the time. And that is why this remains in the list of one of rock’s greatest hits ever produced.
The characters in the song are very real, and they are the very reason the song tastes like weary souls on a weekend, taking a break from their life, chilling at the bar and talking their hearts out as they hold their glasses. Joel paints this picture which makes us feel like we are in that bar on a busy weekend night sharing the ups and downs of life as the piano man sings for us.
Backdrop and Characterization
A 22 year old Billy Joel moved from New York to California, after his first album “Cold Spring Harbor” had a poor reception, due to mastering errors, with his then girlfriend Elizabeth Weber (whom he would later marry) and her son Sean to avoid his then record company he’d signed a contact with.
Joel wished to leave the then record company for Columbia Records but due to his contract he couldn’t immediately. He managed to get a job at The Executive Room in LA, where he worked for 6 months. This is when he wrote his most famous song “Piano Man” where we find all the relatable characters.
Joel hid out at the bar, performing by the name Bill Martin, his full name being William Martin Joel. While his lawyers at Columbia worked on extricating him from the previous record company, which eventually worked out.
While John was an actual bartender at the bar who was sure that he “could be a movie star”, Paul as mentioned in the song was actually a real estate agent who sat at the bar and worked on what might become the next great American novel. The waitress who practiced politics was Joel’s first wife Elizabeth Weber, with whom he moved to California in 1972. She worked along with Billy Joel at the same bar.
Sonic elements
Written in a 3/4 waltz time signature, we can hear a piano, a harmonica, a mandolin and an accordion along with bass, drums and an acoustic guitar.
Release
Released as a single on November 2nd 1973, “Piano Man” peaked at No. 25 on the Billboard Hot 100 in April 1974. It bagged a No. 4 on the Adult Contemporary singles chart. It’s since become one of Billy Joel’s signature hits if not his signature song.
3. Hotel California, The Eagles (1976)
Album: Hotel California; Label: Asylum Records; Recorded at Criteria Studios, Miami
The Rock n Roll Hall of Fame in Cleveland, Ohio calls Hotel California the song that shaped rock n roll. In 1998, the Eagles were inducted into the Rock n Roll Hall of Fame.
Arguably one of Eagles’ most iconic songs, Hotel California was written by Glen Frey (lyrics) along with Don Felder (music) and Don Henley. Originally called “Mexican Reggae”, the song talks about America’s hedonism and self indulgence, although it can be applied to anywhere else.
Backdrop
Henley chose the backdrop of the song as a hotel since The Beverly Hills Hotel had become somewhat of a literal and symbolic focus of their lives at that time. It was all that LA meant to people but not in a good way. “An end of innocence, round one” as he says.
Frey’s contribution to the story was the part where the guy drives a long distance through the desert, and when he finally sees a place to rest, he decides to rest the night there. However, he ends up in “a weird world peopled by freaky characters” which unfortunately feels like a disturbing web he may never escape.
The lines ‘Her mind is Tiffany-twisted, she got the Mercedes-Benz / She got a lot of pretty pretty boys she calls friends’, were based on Henley’s break-up with girlfriend Loree Rodkin.
Eagles’ Playful Jab at Steely Dan
Another interesting fact is that the lines “They stab it with their steely knives, but they just can’t kill the beast” were a playful dig at the band Steely Dan. Not a surprise, Steely Dan released the song “Everything You Did” from 1976’s The Royal Scam in the same year. Fagen sings in the song,“Turn up the Eagles, the neighbors are listening.”.
4. Smells Like Teen Spirit, Nirvana (1991)
Album: Nevermind; Label: DGC Records; Recorded at Sound City Studios, Los Angeles, California
Nirvana’s signature song “Smells Like Teen Spirit” has had lots of contradictions. Yet it remains one of the greatest hits that marked the arrival of grunge.
One night, Kurt Cobain and his friend Kathleen Hanna were drinking at his apartment in Olympia, Washington when a drunken Kathleen spray-painted the words “Kurt smells like Teen Spirit” on his wall. Hanna had spotted the popular deodorant brand “Teen Spirit” at the grocery store earlier. Kurt, unaware of the words’ origins, took this as a compliment instead and used it in the song the next year to evoke the rebellious energy.
Influences
Kurt wanted to write “the ultimate pop song” when he was working on the song. Lot of bands influenced Kurt, including the dark and haunting Swans as well as the Beatles. But for this one, he had The Pixies soundscape in mind. Particularly he liked their tendency of being soft and quiet in the verse and then boosting it up to be loud and hard in the chorus.
Bassist Krist Novoselic found the song ridiculous, but eventually they brought in Dave Grohl, a new drummer in place of Chad Channing and also lowered the tempo of the song, which allowed Dave to throw in some “disco flames”.
Recording and Music Video
The lyrics, largely unfinished at first, had to be completed when they were inside the Sound City Studios on May 1991. This was a point in his life when Kurt was having a lot of conflicting and infuriating thoughts, which shows in the song.
“I just didn’t get them the first time I read them,” bassist Novoselic later said of the lyrics. “And then I started listening to it in the song format, and then I had an idea of what he was talking about. He was talking about kids, commercials, Generation X, the youth bandwagon, and how he’s really disappointed in it, and how he doesn’t want anything to do with it.”
The credits for the song’s popularity also goes to the weirdly disturbing music video. Nirvana filmed the video at GMT Studios in Culver City, Los Angeles, in a set resembling a high school gymnasium. They auditioned 18-25 year olds with a specific high school persona to appear for the video.
One of rock’s greatest hits, “Smells Like Teen Spirit” hit the Top 10 in the UK and US, while the album Nevermind reached Number One in the US and around the world. Having sold over 13 million units worldwide, it is Nirvana’s best-selling song of all time.
5. Every Breath You Take, The Police (1983)
Album: Synchronicity; Label: A&M Records; Recorded at AIR Studios, Montserrat
The chart-busting song from The Police holds quite a few records – enough to be called one of rock’s greatest hits. When BBC announced that the song has been playing on the radio for an equivalent of 150 years, that was definitely one. Although the lyrics may appear to be all romantic and seductive, if you listen closely, there is a certain kind of compulsion behind it, the point of obsession where it becomes quite sinister, as Sting himself admits.
Fans Are Used To Love Songs, But What About the Sinister Feel?
Sting’s personal life added to fans’ curiosity as in the same year he wrote the song (1982), he had a separation from his first wife Francis Tomelty. This was because Sting had an affair with one of Tomelty’s friends, Trudie Styler, who he went on to marry.
To avoid the ensuing publicity, he took a break and went to Jamaica, where he partly wrote the song on the same desk as Ian Fleming wrote several James Bond novels.
A song with a fairly simple chord sequence similar to Stand By Me, Sting had said in 1993, “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 song uses his signature ninth chord, adding to the sinister feel.
Sting’s Fight With the Drummer Stewart Copeland
By the time Synchronicity was released, Sting had been having serious arguments with drummer Stewart Copeland, often leading up to fights, as producer Hugh Padgham had said. The straining relationship was due to creative differences and tension over songwriting control, where Stewart felt Sting was micromanaging his drumming.
Also read : Exploring the Ethereal Realm of Led Zeppelin’s Artworks
Sting finally made the band listen to the demo but he did something this time he hadn’t before, singing the chords over a Hammond organ. Later guitarist Andy Summers reminded them they were a “guitar band” so they went with his parts instead. “Andy went away and worked out that guitar part, and suddenly it all made sense,” said Stewart.
After lots of creative differences among the band members over this simple song, which nearly led them to throw it out from the album, they finally completed the recording within a week. And who could have predicted this will be one of rock music’s greatest hits!
Every Breath You Take became a huge hit in the UK and the States, where it topped the charts for a record run in 1983 and won two Grammys. Sting also won an Ivor Novello award for it in the same year.
