On March 11th 1978 French pop singer, composer, songwriter, record producer, drummer and dancer Claude Francois, also known as Cloclo, was electrocuted changing a light bulb while standing in his bathtub. He was aged just 39. This was on the eve of a scheduled US tour. He sold more than 20 million records during his career, and further 6 million since his death. He had the 1976 UK hit, “Tears On The Telephone”, which reached number 35 in the UK chart. This was his only UK hit.
François co-wrote the lyrics of “Comme d’habitude” with Jacques Revaux. Francois took his version of the song to number three in the French charts in 1967. In 1969 Paul Anka wrote English lyrics for the song and gave it the title “My Way,” which became one of Frank Sinatra’s signature songs. David Bowie said that in 1968, a year before Paul Anka acquired the French song his publisher asked him to write English lyrics for “Comme d’habitude”. His version, titled “Even A Fool Learns To Love”, was rejected. He never forgot that rejection though. This work became the starting point for his 1971 song “Life On Mars”. Chris O’Leary wrote that David Bowie felt “using “Comme d’habitude” wasn’t theft but more a statement of rightful ownership.” The phrase “Inspired by Frankie” was written next to the song in the LP liner notes of Bowie’s ‘Hunky Dory’ album.
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Joaquin Phoenix puts in a truly devastatingly spectacular performance as Batman’s arch-nemesis Joker in the new DC film of the origin of the Clown Prince Of Crime. I am a big fan of comics, mostly Marvel, but in Batman and most of his villains DC has something on a par with the Marvel Universe. However, until now the film adaptations of DC characters have been at best sporadically good. But with ‘Joker’ they have moved into the Premier League. This film, directed by Todd Phillips is for me potentially the best superhero related film ever, in fact, I would say that it is possibly the best film that I have ever seen. It works as a study of abuse, bullying, isolation and mental breakdown and how society treats those who are different. There are obvious superhero and supervillain references given the iconic nature of one of DC Comics’ best-known villains. However, even with no knowledge of comic history or the key characters, you would probably agree that this is a stone-cold great film. For nerdy comic fans like me, you do get to see a young Bruce Wayne. Apparently, Joaquin Phoenix lost 52 pounds to play the character and he based the maniacal laughter on “videos of people suffering from pathological laughter” He didn’t look at previous Joker portrayals for inspiration, but he read a book about political assassinations so he could understand killers and motivations. He must be in line for an Oscar in my opinion.
The soundtrack from Icelandic musician and composer Hildur Gudnadottir. Hildur is a classicly trained cellist and has played with Throbbing Gristle and Animal Collective. She also provided the soundtrack for the recent TV mini-series ‘Chernobyl’. The musical soundscapes that she has created for ‘Joker’ are dark, moody and gothic and help to build scenes perfectly. Click here to listen to her soundtrack on Spotify. In addition to Gudnadottir’s work, there are a lot of previously hit or classic songs used at key points in the film. At one point you can hear one of my favourite 70s soul songs in the background while Phoenix as Arthur Fleck is putting on his clown make up. That song is “Everybody Plays The Fool” by the Main Ingredient. Other songs that feature are “Smile” by Jimmy Durante and “That’s Life” by Frank Sinatra, both of which take prominent roles in the film’s soundscape. Tracks by the Doors, Joy Division, Pink Floyd and Donovan. “Left Speaker Blown” by Liars an LA-based band formed in the 90s is deeply dark and bordering on the scary side of beautiful. There is clearly at least one controversial track used in the film though. In quite a pivotal scene as Arthur Fleck’s mental state moves him more toward the Joker character he becomes he dances down some steps backed by a soundtrack of notorious UK paedophile Gary Glitter’s “Rock ‘n’ Roll Part 2”. Now to many people, particularly in the UK, the thought of the former Paul Gadd making money is gross. However, were the music pickers form the film aware of Glitter’s activities? He never really sold much in the USA, he was essentially a one hit wonder in America. I understand that he is not likely to receive ongoing royalties for this, but will probably receive a lump sum payment. Half of that will go to his co-writer Mike Leander, who I have a degree of sympathy for. In my opinion, it was, with hindsight, foolish to use this tune. However in the context of the film it works!
The bottom line is that this is an incredible film and well worth seeing, don’t let the Glitter shit prevent you from giving it a shot.
As a footnote, last year in a Rolling Stone interview discussing his favourite Glam Rock songs Joe Elliot of Def Leppard said of Glitter’s “I’m the Leader of the Gang (I Am!)”; “This is going to be very controversial because nobody talks about Gary Glitter anymore, since he’s a child molester, but there’s no doubt that in 1973, him and Michael Leander, who previously worked with the Beatles, made a fantastic song. It’s just an absolutely tremendous sing-along, laugh-along pop anthem. It was just undeniable. It starts off with a motorbike and then Glitter and the band start this “Come on, come on” chant and it speeds up and then just stops and he goes, “Do you want to be in my gang, my gang?” and it’s just begging for what comes next, which is the whole Glitter band going, “Oh yeah.” It’s just really well-constructed stuff.
You won’t hear him on the radio in the U.K. anymore because he’s banished to bloody hell because of all his misdemeanors with underage girls. But probably no more so than Jerry Lee Lewis who still gets played. And Chuck Berry had all these tours before he died, and nobody seems to remember that he put cameras in the toilets of his restaurant and filmed people. So people pick and choose their pariahs, I suppose. But if you discuss music and nothing but music here, the songs you had when you’re a 12-year-old kid were fantastic. And that one song in particular was the best one I ever heard.” I am not for one moment this condones anythine Glitter the paedophile did, but this is just another view.
Given that Radiohead recently shared what might have been the theme to the latest James Bond film, ‘Spectre’ I was reminded of some other Bond theme trivia. The theme song to 1979’s ‘Moonraker’ was originally issued to Frank Sinatra and Kate Bush. Not as a duo, although that might have been somewhat intriguing. Eventually it was recorded by Shirley Bassey.
Rita Coolidge released “All Time High“, the theme to ‘Octopussy’ in 1983. That song had previously been turned down by Mari Wilson. Whatever happened to her?
Then in 2008 Jack White and Alicia Keys provided the frankly unforgettable “Another Way To Die” for ‘Quantum Of Solace’. But I wonder what might have been had Amy Winehouse recorded it as per the original plan?
I’m getting just a little bit more excited now it is the 12th of December after all. In keeping with this years With Just A Hint Of Mayhem advent posts I have two diametrically opposed songs for you today. But obviously two that have the number twelve in their titles.
First up is the timeless song “Twelfth Of Never” which was initially recorded by Johnny Mathis in 1957. He apparently didn’t like the song and it was demoted to the B Side of “Chances Are”. The song has been recorded by many, many artists since then. The Mathis version made it to number 9 in the US charts and Donny Osmond took it to number one in the UK and number 8 in the USA in 1973. The list of cover versions is almost endless and includes; Nina Simone, Barry Gibb, Cliff Richard, Tammy Wynette, Chi-Lites, Glen Campbell, Cher, Dolly Parton, Roger Whittaker, Barry Manilow, Andy Williams, Olivia Newton John, Hank Marvin and Jeff Buckley. Jeff’s version can be found on the Legacy edition of ‘Live At The Sin E’ and remains very faithful to the Nina Simone version of the song. The regular readers among you will know that I am a big fan of Texan crooner Johnny Nash. In fact I would go as far as saying that his singing voice is my favourite voice ever. Anyway I haven’t posted about Mr Nash for quite a while so I thought I would use his version of the “Twelfth Of Never” taken from his 1968 album ‘Soul Folk’.
The second song today flows from the Julian Casablancas post from yesterday. It is “12:51” by the band that Julian is a big part of; the Strokes. The song was written by Mr Casablancas and was the first single released from the bands second album ‘Room On Fire’ in 2003. The song made it to number 7 in the UK and reached the top 40 in Ireland, Canada, the Netherlands and Sweden. The songs original title was “Supernova”. The video for the song was directed by Roman Ford Coppola, the son of Francis Ford Coppola and the cousin of Nicolas Cage. It has a theme that is very reminiscent of the ‘Tron’ the 1982 movie. When the band played a number of Japanese dates to support the release of the ‘Room On Fire’ album in 2003 they included a cover of the Frank Sinatra classic written by Paul Anka “My Way”, only they sang it with Japanese lyrics!
Fifty seven years ago in 1956 Frank Sinatra had the honour of becoming the first artist to have a UK number one album with ‘Songs For Swingin Lovers‘. Since then there have now been 1,000 number ones; sadly the thousandth is Robbie Williams‘ second swing album, ‘Swings Both Ways’. It’s such a shame that it couldn’t have been Jake Bugg with his new album, ‘Shangri La’. But I suppose it might have been worse given that Lady Gaga’s ‘ARTPOP‘ was 999th.
I thought I’d check out which rock ‘n’ roll gods had the 666th UK number one album and it wasn’t any kind of god or devil just Nickleback with ‘Silver Side Up’
Robbie has now had eleven solo number one albums, equalling Elvis Presley. If you count his number ones with Take That it’s fifteen which is the same number as the Beatles. However Robbie is way behind on the weeks spent at number one in the UK albums chart list. The Beatles top that at 174 weeks with Robbie languishing in sixth place with just 31 weeks. The acts between him and the Beatles are Elvis Presley (63 weeks), Abba (57), Rolling Stones (45) and Simon and Garfunkel (40). I suspect Gary Barlow will have the 1,001st number one next week with his new album, which from what I have heard might rate as the dullest UK number one album for some time! Click here to read more about Robbie on the BBC.
Did you know that there are four winners of acting Oscars who have also had UK number one singles? No nor did I until I chanced upon the quiz in this weeks NME. Those four clever people and their UK number ones are;
Frank Sinatra won the best supporting actor Oscar for his role in 1954’s ‘From Here To Eternity’
Frank’s UK number one songs were; “Three Coins In A Fountain” (1954), “Strangers In The Night” (1966) and “Something Stupid” (with his daughter Nancy Sinatra (1967)
Cher’s UK number one singles were “I Got You Babe” (with then husband Sonny Bono) (1965), “The Shoop Shoop Song (It’s In His Kiss)” (1990), “Love Can Build A Bridge” (with Chrissie Hynde, Eric Clapton and Neneh Cherry) (1995) and “Believe” (1998)
Lee Marvin won the best actor Oscar for his part in the 1965 film ‘Cat Ballou‘
Lee’s only UK number one was “Wandrin’ Star” which was taken from the soundtrack of ‘Paint Your Wagon’ in 1970. The B side was another actor not famed for his singing, Clint Eastwood with “I Talk To The Trees”
Based upon information released recently it is alleged that the US Government had planned to blow up the moon in the late 50s as a means of intimidating their nemesis in the Cold War, the Soviet Union. After the Russians effectively took the lead in the Space Race with the launch of Sputnik in 1957 it was apparently believed that a show of strength like blowing up the moon would really scare the Russians. Apparently it was called ‘A Study of Lunar Research Flights’ or ‘Project A119‘. Even that sounds a little James Bond like doesn’t it?
It really does seem like a crackpot scheme and it is unlikely at the time that anyone possessed enough in their nuclear arsenal to actually complete the task. At best it might have left the man in the moon looking more like the elephant Man and the satellite’s surface covered in high levels of radiation. In addition any debris that fell to earth would almost certainly have been radioactive as well.
I wonder if this idea came from the same think tank that thought of the idea of using an explosive cigar to blow up Fidel Castro or to rig the voting in Florida in 2000 in favour of Dubya. Ooops wait a minute that second one was true wasn’t it? had it happened then Neil Armstrong probably wouldn’t have been there to utter his famous ‘one step for man’ line. But then again maybe it did happen and didn’t work very well other than to make the moon radioactive. That would certainly give more credence to those people who believe the moon landings were faked and took place in a film studio directed by Stanley Kubrick.
I’d love to know what you think of this incredibly stupid, yet potentially real plan of Eisenhower’s government. Bearing in mind that his Vice President was Tricky Dicky Nixon, maybe it isn’t surprising! Anyway as I have said many times before so here are a few songs that may not have happened or certainly wouldn’t have been the same had the moon been blown to smithereens, feel free to add your own moon related songs.
Apologies but there are two kiddie fiddlers for the price of one on this next one!
And finally a special Billy Bonus, my favourite track from Pink Floyd’s ‘Dark side Of The Moon’; “Brain Damage”
Hands up who thought that heavy drug references in music arrived in the 60s and the ‘straights’ just didn’t get it? Well if that’s you, you’re very, very wrong. Fred Astaire was singing about Benzedrine in a song back in 1942. The song was “On The Beam” written by Johnny Mercer and Jerome Kern. Astaire sang it in the film ‘You Were Never Lovelier‘ (Thank you to the rather excellent Word magazine for bringing this to my attention)
It’s certainly not the earliest drug reference in song either. Cole Porter wrote “I Get A Kick Out Of You” for the Broadway musical ‘Anything Goes‘ in the early thirties and the song has the lines ‘Some get a kick from cocaineI’m sure that if I took even one sniff That would bore me terrifically, too’ I love that I have been able to talk about lines and cocaine in the same sentence there!
Feel free to contribute with your own favourite drug reference in songs, especially if it’s earlier than these two!
Many of you know that Catwoman (a.k.a. Catherine Lee now Catherine Adamson) and I recently got married. As you might have guessed music did play quite a big part in the day, beyond just the choice of first dance. We chose a small but special group of songs for our guests to listen to while they were waiting for the beautiful bride to arrive and the ceremony to start. Those songs were;
It took us months to choose the song that Catherine would walk up the aisle to and we believe in the end it was the perfect choice. It
was Louis Armstrong’s “What A Wonderful World”
Then we had four songs very carefully selected for the signing of the register. Those were;
We even chose the song for us to exit the ceremony room. That simply had to be “This Will Be” from Natalie Cole. We even managed a half decent jig on the way out of the room to that one!
We also chose a selection of swing type songs as background to the serving of champagne and canapés or as I like to say; fizzies n fod! The background music for the wedding breakfast (incidentally why is it called a breakfast when it’s not usually in the morning?) was carefully selected classic soul and Motown love songs. These two sets are included as a list at the end of this post.
Then of course it was time for the first dance, the title of which was also immortalised on my cufflinks for the wedding day. It had to be
the really beautiful Nick Cave ballad, “Into My Arms” Probably the only song I know that includes the phrase ‘interventionist god’ in its lyrics.
We hired a swing band for the evening; the truly excellent and very talented Chris Hilton Little Big Band. They did two sets of around an
hour each combining swing classics and swing arrangements of many other hits too. Their version of “I Wanna Be Like You” from the Jungle Book was a real rocking party tune.
There was also a very special guest appearance after the bands first set. A long overdue set from the superstar DJs of the 70s ‘Bill
& Glen the Disco Men’ this was their first gig in more than 30 years. They had specially designed wigs and costumes. Well ok cheap T Shirts with their pictures on and tacky 70s wigs from the party shop. None the less the boys really rocked the joint with a storming set of pure 70s disco classics, many of which haven’t been aired in years. In case you were wondering, the Bill part of the team is me and the Glen part is my best buddy Glen Voisey. We went to Ryefield Primary School together in Hillingdon in the late 60s. It was my selection that managed to actually clear the dance floor though; personally in my defence I just feel that there was no one with enough class and taste to really appreciate the finer points of Mr Dooley Silverspoon’s amazing “Bump Me Baby” The full Bill and Glen set was;
“Boogie Nights” – Heatwave
“Get Dancin'” – Disco Tex And The Sex-O-Lettes
“Ain’t Gonna Bump No More” – Joe Tex
“Bump Me Baby” – Dooley Silverspoon
“You Make Me Feel (Mighty Real)” – Sylvester
“Get Down Tonight” – KC & The Sunshine Band
“Rock The Boat” – Hues Corporation
“September” – Earth, Wind & Fire
In addition to all of this there were also two other musical related items on the day; one was a reading of the lyrics of Bob Dylan’s “Wedding Song” lyrics from the Planet Waves album. This was read by our good friend and wife of my best man, Caron Godbold-Derbyshire. (The other two readings were not music related but were superb none the less, so thank you also to Rachel Vernelle and Ruth Smethurst). The second of these musical pieces was a part of my speech at the end of the wedding breakfast. I wanted to do
something along the lines of what Peter Sellers did in the 60s with George Martin, when he recorded a version of the Beatles “A Hard Days Night” in the style of Laurence Olivier.
It took me ages to come up with the right song. I considered Kylie’s “I Should Be So Lucky” and “Love Is All Around” from the Troggs or Wet Wet Wet. But then the weekend before the wedding I saw Madness at the Reading Festival and I knew what song I was going to try in a Olivier style; it simply had to be “It Must Be Love”, and it was! I introduced that part of the speech as something Shakespearian, using some props; a cape and a skull. I kicked off with “Alas poor Yorrick…….” And then went straight into “It Must Be Love” in my
best Olivier style. I felt it could have worked really well or could have bombed completely. I think it went quite well, but obviously I would appreciate any comments from those of you who were there!
I should also add that my excellent Best Man, Mr John Williams also managed to include a little section from David Bowie’s “Heroes” in his speech!
Thank you for reading this far into what has been a rather self-indulgent post, but I hoped that you have enjoyed the music too. I would
also be interested to hear any stories you have of music used at weddings; be they your own or those of friends and family.
Liam no longer has a bone to pick with his brother, but he does have a nose of his own to pick!
Just a brief post with a couple of bits of Christmas related news for you. Firstly, could the Gallagher brothers feud be thawing just a little bit? Liam has posted a message on Twitter wishing Noel a Happy Christmas. The Tweet also wished seasons greetings to the Zutons. The tweet read like this ‘Noel Gallagher n Zutons Merry Christmas LG x’ You can follow Liam on Twitter if you so desire Twitter.com/liamgallagher I wonder if Noel, who to be fair has a Christmas type name, will respond.
With Just A Hint Of Mayhem 