Aerosmith guitarist celebrates his 70th birthday today. He and Steven Tyler don't always agree when writing songs. "Eat the Rich" is a perfect example. Joe Perry co-wrote "Eat the Rich" with Steven Tyler and Bryan Adams' songwriting partner Jim Vallance, who helped with the writing of a bunch of '80s and '90s Aerosmith cuts. Perry, whose contributions are generally musical, says he was never all that down with the idea of the song.
“I’m thinking, ‘How can Aerosmith do a song like this?’ I don’t think any of us are half as rich as people think we are, but we’ve definitely been able to earn a living doing this. Saying ‘Eat the Rich’ is kind of like us saying ‘eat me’. So I kind of had a little bit of a problem with that title, but I think the riffs made it right.”
Paul McCartney has made no bones about the facts that some of his lyrics don't make sense, and, he has, on occasion, tossed in some Liverpool slang.
He says, "When you are kids you make up silly things, and what’s great about it is you and your friends all know those silly things… So, they don't have to mean anything! We had a few words and phrases that, if one of us said it, would amuse the others because it was like a secret code..."
One of those codes appeared in John Lennon's "Sun King" from the medley on Side Two of The Beatles' Abbey Road.
Paul McCartney on Liverpool slang making it into John Lennon's "Sun King" on The Beatles' Abbey Road.
"He didn't have any middle lyrics so we were just making up rubbish. There's an expression, it was called chicka ferdy. Chicka ferdy! Chicka ferdy! I don't know if you ever heard it, but it was like, you know, it was a rude expression. I never heard it anywhere else, so we kind of put it in the Spanish lyrics [sings]. So doing that with John with the guys, that was like a great memory."
Kim Thayil guitarist for Soundgarden tuens 60 today. He couldn't believe Chris Cornell wrote "Black Hole Sun" so quickly, and on guitar. It was on the album Superunknown in 1994. He first heard "Black Hole Sun" on a demo the late Chris Cornell brought into the studio.
“There are guitar parts on that that sounded like they would’ve been written on piano. They’re not, but it sounded that way -- like the opening arpeggiated part. I thought, ‘Wow! You wrote that that quickly?’ Hiro Yamamoto, our founding bass player, walked into the studio to kind of say hi and he heard that demo and he starts smiling. He goes, ‘That’s your hit.’”
The Rolling Stones will kick off Labor Day weekend with the deluxe reissue of their third album of the '70s -- 1973's Goats Head Soup.
Mick Jagger on Goats Head Soup:
"The weird thing about this record is, it is a few bits and bobs. Most of it was focused in a way and recorded in Jamaica, but not all of it. When you listen to it it's very different from [our previous album] Exile [on Main St.]. But Exile was this sprawling thing that was recorded everywhere over a long time period. And Goats Head's a bit more centered on what we recorded in Kingston, Jamaica. Though of course Exile wad very mixed up with tracks from previous sessions and so on. I don't really recall us having any sort of sit down talk saying, 'Okay, we're gonna make a record that's different.' I don't think we did at all. But it's a very kind of quite eclectic bunch of songs I think."
Keith Richards on Goats Head Soup.
"As far as Goats Head Soup went, I realize that it was the first album that Mick and I really truly had to deal with the Exile bit. Because Exile on Main St., hey, we were ready to go. We just lived in my basement, everybody, and we just did what we did. And we were still like on each other's backs. But by the time we got to cut the Goats Head Soup, Mick and I, all of the band, had sort of separated over the world for a while, you know, so you had to learn in a way, or figure out how to write songs outside of not being in each other's pocket all the time, you know."
On September 2nd, 1995, John Fogerty performed at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame's all-star grand opening concert at Municipal Stadium in Cleveland. 25 years ago today (September 2nd), John Fogerty performed two Creedence Clearwater Revival classics -- "Born on the Bayou" and "Fortunate Son" -- at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame's all-star grand opening concert at Municipal Stadium in Cleveland. He also joined Bruce Springsteen for a duet cover of Roy Orbison's "Pretty Woman." He talks about using "Born on the Bayou" as a concert opener. Born on the Bayou was the B side of Proud Mary which made it to # 2 on the Billboard Hot 100 in 1969.
John Fogerty on opening shows with "Born on the Bayou."
"That started out a long, long time ago. That was my decision in 1969 to start our shows with that song. Really, the reason is it's a nice medium tempo thing that has a real good groove to it, but yet I can get way into it vocally. I can really start to hit my voice really hard right away and it gives my fingers a chance to warm up."
On September 1st, 1980, Fleetwood Mac ended their 10-month Tusk world tour at the Hollywood Bowl, where Lindsey Buckingham announced that it would be the group's last show for a long time. "Tusk" was a Lindsey Buckingham track that had been put aside during the sessions for the album of the same name. That is, until drummer Mick Fleetwood visited his mother in France during a break in the recording. There he encountered the local town brass band, which aroused him from his bed one night, but also made him think about the sense of community it inspired. Fleetwood picks up the story.
“I thought no more about it until one day I went into the studio and said, ‘What about putting a brass band on it?’ And we got the USC Marching Band and everybody thought I was ‘round the twist. And I said, ‘Well, we’ve got to record it at Dodger Stadium.’ And they said, ‘Mick, you’re definitely around the twist, it’ll cost a fortune,’ which it didn’t. They gave us, very graciously, the use of Dodger Stadium and we did indeed record the brass band at Dodger Stadium. And it made its way not only onto the album, but it became a pretty off-the-wall track for Fleetwood Mac.
A fuming Jack Osbourne dashed off a Facebook post blasting the tabloids for running photos of his father, Ozzy, after letting his hair go its natural grey color.
The shots of Ozzy ran Saturday in Britain's The Daily Mail.
Twisted Sister's Dee Snider once again criticized Kiss for letting replacement members use the signature stage makeup worn by original guitarist Ace Frehley and drummer Peter Criss.
"I hate what Kiss is doing," the singer said"I hate what Kiss is doing with the guys with Ace and Peter's makeup on — I'm not a fan."
Guitarist Tommy Thayer joined the band in 2002, and drummer Eric Singer first came on board in 1991, taking over after the death of Eric Carr. Thayer and Singer currently wear the makeup designs of Frehley and Criss, respectively.
Snider previously blasted Kiss' makeup move in 2015. "I don't see how people could accept this," he told Eddie Trunk. "Tommy Thayer? I'm sorry. It's insulting. Not only did he play with a tribute band of Kiss, he's imitating Ace in his entire act!"
Responding to Snider's 2015 comments, Kiss' Paul Stanley responded with this: "Let me put it in the simplest terms. In this case, this guy is a wannabe, has always been a wannabe and desperately wants attention and to be taken seriously, and that will never happen because he’s obviously clueless to the fact that he and his whole band are a bunch of buffoons."
Oooh Snap! Dee shoulda learned his lesson back then.
Rush guitarist Alex Lifeson celebrates his 67th birthday today (August 27th) . The song "Limelight" was a song about how the band was going to deal with their success. It was on the album Moving Pictures in 1981 writen by Geddy Lee, Alex Lifeson and Neil Peart. It was written at a time when Rush was finally beginning to taste success for the first time. Geddy Lee says the song reflects drummer and lyricist Neil Peart's difficulty in coping with that fame.
”Alex and I have always adapted to the spotlight a little easier than Neil has. He’s a more intensely private person than Alex and I are. At the same time, we were all going through those feelings of coming to terms with the fact that we were starting to be successful and there were a lot more demands being made on our time. And we were trying to figure out the kind of success we wanted to have and the kind of band we wanted to be at that time. You’re preoccupied, unfortunately, with being successful at certain points of being successful and I think it came out in that song.”
Bruce Springsteen released his landmark album, Born to Run, 45 years ago today, Tuesday -- August 25th, 1975.
It was the pivotal album in his career, coming after two albums that hardly sold, despite great reviews. The feeling was that if his third album wasn't successful, it might spell the end of Springsteen as a recording artist. He says there was definitely pressure on him.
“Even though my first record had got a lot of attention when it came out, shortly thereafter we kinda slipped back under the radar. This particular record you knew that the spotlight was gonna be on you, so you were always — you were aware of that to a certain degree.”
Springsteen says he spent an enormous amount of time composing the album's title track, which became his first Top 40 hit and was a lengthy process of writing the song "Born to Run."
"The music was composed very meticulously, so were the words. The amount of time spent honing the lyrics was enormous. The notebook that I wrote 'Born to Run' in, you would take the first page and you would see a line or two -- 50 pages later you know you'd get something close to the finished song. I think it was this thick with different versions and I wrote and I rewrote it and I rewrote it and I rewrote it."
