Tag Archives: Joe Cocker

Classic Songs to Be Discovered, Derivative Works, Influenced, Music, My Stories, Unsung Heroes

1982 – Volume 7: Everything Dies, That’s A Fact

The Alan Parsons Project – Eye In The Sky
Alan Parsons is one of those unsung heroes that a lot of people don’t really know about.

In 1968, a then 18-year-old Alan Parsons had his first engineering credit on “Abbey Road” from The Beatles. Proper sound engineers are responsible for the sound capture and there was no better at it, than Alan Parsons.

From there, he went on to work with Paul McCartney, The Hollies and his piece d’resitance was Pink Floyd’s “The Dark Side of the Moon”. He was the engineer on “The Dark Side Of The Moon”. So the sounds you hear on that album, the sounds that went into 30 million houses around their world, owe a lot to Alan Parsons.

After the success of “The Dark Side Of The Moon”, Parson’s was offered the chance to work on “Wish You Were Here”, however he declined it because he wanted to get his own project going.

How many people today would decline an offer like that to follow a path that financially could be worse off, but creatively satisfying.

So The Alan Parsons Project was born with producer Eric Woolfson (RIP). Both of the guys met at Abbey Roads studio.

The studio sounds Parsons captured with the bands he engineered would end up on his project.

Which brings me to “Eye In The Sky”, his 1982 release. For a studio band, “Eye In The Sky” is their sixth album, which goes to show that there was a demand for their music. All up 10 Alan Parsons Project albums were released and achieved combined sales of more than 40m copies.

Eric Woolfson was also a successful rock musician, but no one knew of him. He wasn’t in the magazines or on MTV, but he had a very successful career compared to the MTV heroes of the 80’s. And for him, it all started off by doing session piano work in the 60’s which led to a song writing publishing contract which led to a production gig at Abbey Road Studios and so forth.

How cool is the Eye of Horus cover, which instantly brings back memories of “Powerslave” from Iron Maiden.

“Sirius” (Instrumental) leads into “Eye In The Sky”
If “Sirius” sounds familiar to sporting fans, well it should. It was used by the Chicago Bulls to introduce their team during the Michael Jordan era. Wikipedia also tells me that “Sirius” was used by the New Orleans Saints as their entrance music for Super Bowl XLIV. The Kansas City Chiefs also used it during kick-offs.

It then leads into “Eye In The Sky” which is the most well-known song from the album. Maybe you could call it a “hit” song without it being a hit on the charts, but a hit with listeners of the band. Eric Woolfson is doing lead vocals on it.

I am the eye in the sky
Looking at you
I can read your mind

“You’re Gonna Get Your Fingers Burned”
It has funk/soul/R&B singer Lenny Zakatek doing lead vocals. Zakatek was the lead singer with Gonzalez who had the worldwide disco hit, “I Haven’t Stopped Dancing Yet”. From 1974, he started to work with The Alan Parsons Project, a collaboration that would span 8 albums and 24 songs.

If I’m wrong and you are right
Then I will light your darkness with confusion

“Psychobabble”
It has Elmer Gantry on vocals or otherwise known as Dave Terry. I remember reading a story about a group of musicians who got hired by Fleetwood Mac’s manager to impersonate Fleetwood Mac for a U.S. tour in the Seventies. Well, Dave Terry was one of the members. When the ruse failed, front man Dave Terry and guitarist Graham “Kirby” Gregory formed Stretch and had a hit song with the Kirby penned, “Why Did You Do That Thing?”

But I don’t care, it’s all psychobabble rap to me

“Mammagamma (Instrumental)”
Is typical of the Pink Floyd like instrumentals Parsons and Woolfson create. I love it.

“Old and Wise”
It has Colin Bunstone on vocals. Remember the song “She’s Not There” from the Sixties by the rock band The Zombies. If you do, that’s Colin Bunstone on vocals. One of many singles and projects he was involved in.

And, oh, when I’m old and wise
Bitter words mean little to me

Damn right. As you get older, you realise that you are not immortal and suddenly “the end” means more than all of those other wrongs you have suffered. You get a different perspective.

Bruce Springsteen – Nebraska
It’s a pretty bleak folk record. Springsteen recorded it at his home in Colts Neck, New Jersey. There was no E-Street Band. It was him and a four-track PortaStudio tape recorder.

“Everything dies, baby, that’s a fact,”
That lyric from “Atlantic City,” defines the tone of the album. The character in the song went from having a job and trying to save, to withdrawing everything he had, hitting the road to Atlantic City and then when he was low on cash he agreed to do a little favour for a friend.

Well, I got a job and tried to put my money away
But I got debts that no honest man can pay
So I drew what I had from the Central Trust
And I bought us two tickets on that Coast City bus

Now I been looking for a job but it’s hard to find
Down here, it’s just winners and losers and don’t get caught on the wrong side of that line
Well, I’m tired of coming out on this losing end
So, honey, last night I met this guy and I’m gonna do a little favour for him

And the whole album is littered with characters that did what they needed to do to survive and take care of their families. Like “Johnny 99” and the “Highway Patrolman”.

“Johnny 99”
Now judge, judge, I got debts no honest man could pay
The bank was holding’ my mortgage and taking’ my house away
Now I ain’t saying’ that make me an innocent man
But it was more’n all this that put that gun in my hand

There it is again, “I got debts no honest mane could pay line”. It was Johnny 99’s answer back to the judge as to why he did what he did.

“Highway Patrolman”
“I always done an honest job as honest as I could
But when it’s your brother, sometimes you look the other way”

“Mansion On The Hill” is the same as “Nebraska”.
There’s a place out on the edge of town, sir
Rising above the factories and the fields
Now, ever since I was a child I can remember
That mansion on the hill

There are winners and losers in life and then there are people just content with life. But the ones not content with life, want to be like those people living in the mansion on the hill.

“Used Cars”
Now, the neighbours come from near and far
As we pull up in our brand new used car

It’s a brilliant lyric of the times and how that used car was cherished like it was brand new. You had to have lived that time to understand it.

“Reason To Believe”.

Still at the end of every hard-earned day people find some reason to believe

There it is, the glimmer of hope on a bleak album. Because regardless of the situation, we still find some reason to believe in the next day and in the future.

The next two entries in my 1982 list are songs.

Joe Cocker and Jennifer Warnes – “Up Where We Belong”
It’s 1982 and Joe Cocker re-enters the public conversation. No one could escape “Up Where We Belong” a duet with Jennifer Warnes and the theme song to the Richard Gere/Debra Winger movie “An Officer And A Gentleman.”

As with all things Joe, it was a song written by a who’s who of writers, Jack Nitzsche, Buffy Sainte-Marie and Will Jennings. An original this time around, instead of a cover.

Some hang on to “used to be”
Live their lives looking behind
All we have is here and now
All our life, out there to find

Brilliant lyrics in the second verse. Even rock heads and metal heads couldn’t escape the song. I am also pretty sure that some power metal band covered it in the Nineties. It was one of those songs.

Moving Pictures – What About Me
The “Days of Innocence” was released in 1981 in Australia and 1982 in the U.S. I still haven’t heard the album it was on but I know the song well. It was released as a single in January 1982 in Australia and September 1982 in the U.S. Talk about windowing releases.

It was the second biggest single in Australia behind Survivors “Eye Of The Tiger”. It’s written by guitarist Garry Frost and Frances Swan Frost and like all hit songs from the past, it wasn’t even planned for the album.

I guess I’m lucky, I smile a lot
But sometimes I wish for more, than I’ve got…

There it is again, the wish for more. Stay tuned for Part 8. I never envisaged that my homage to 1982 would take so many iterations.

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A to Z of Making It, Influenced, Music, My Stories, Unsung Heroes

The Master At Re-Interpretation: Joe Cocker (R.I.P)

When I started to play guitar in the Eighties I was obviously into the whole metal and hard rock scene. As far as I was concerned, it had to be all pedal point riffs, fast eighth or sixteenth notes and a whole lot of shred thrown in. I was self-taught for about three years however my dad kept on pushing me to go to a guitar teacher.

My dad got the number of a teacher from a work colleague of his, who had has son visiting the same teacher. To cut a long story short, the lessons were structured on theory, rhythm, scales and it ended with the teacher (his name was Michael) showing me a song to play. Michael asked me in advance to give him a list of hard rock and metal songs that I want to learn so that he could figure them out and show me. I told him that I got that part covered and I would like him to show me songs that he likes regardless of what styles they are or from what artist they are.

I must say it was a dead set eye opener. Apart from sitting down and learning songs outside of the style I was interested, I also learnt the art of melody, better chord placements and vocal phrasing. Overall these sessions made me a better musician and a songwriter. It changed my viewpoints from being just a guitar player to being a band player and to play for the song instead of the glory of the solo.

“Bad Moon Rising”, “Sitting On The Dock Of The Bay”, “Mr Bojangles”, “Sunshine of Your Love”, “I Shot The Sherriff”, “Knockin On Heavens Door”, “Imagine”, “While My Guitar Gently Weeps” and “Lambada” happened in the first 9 weeks. Then we started with some Beatles songs like “Yesterday”, “All My Loving”, “Come Together”, “Let It Be”, “Day Tripper”, “Eight Days A Week” and eventually we got to “With A Little Help From My Friends”.

And that is where Joe Cocker comes into my life. It was his version of the song that I remembered. So I started to study some of his most well-known songs and I found out that he didn’t write any of them. But it was his re-interpretations of those songs that made him a superstar. Some people are great at just writing songs, some people are great at writing and performing their own songs, while others are great at re-interpreting other people’s songs. That is Joe Cocker.

His fame is tied to what he did with the words of other songwriters. And Cocker (along with his collaborator’s) chose well.

“She Came In Through The Bathroom Window” and “With A Little Help from My Friends” released in 1969 and 1968 respectively. “She Came In” was Cocker’s big U.S hit at the time, while “With A Little Help” was his big U.K hit.

“Delta Lady” released in 1969 was written by Leon Russell. “Don’t Let Me Be Misunderstood” also released in 1969 was written Nina Simone and covered in 1965 by the Animals. “Feelin Alright” was written by Dave Mason with Traffic.

“The Letter” released in 1970 was a song from 1967 by the band Box Tops. An upbeat rock version of “Cry Me a River” was released in 1970 by Cocker however the song’s roots go back to 1953 and it was written by Arthur Hamilton. “You Are So Beautiful” released in 1974 was written by Bill Preston whose original version first appeared in 1974 however it was Cockers slowed down version courtesy of producer Jim Price that made the song a hit.

Cocker’s biggest single came in 1982, when ‘Up Where We Belong,’ a duet with singer-songwriter Jennifer Warnes’ from the movie ‘An Officer and a Gentleman,’ stayed at No. 1 for three weeks. This is one song that wasn’t a cover of a previous song, however it was written by a song writing committee in Jack Nitzsche, Buffy Sainte-Marie and Will Jennings.

Then in 1986, “You Can Leave Your Hat On” came out. The song was written by Randy Newman and it goes back to 1972. “Unchain My Heart” was released in 1987. The song was written by Bobby Sharp and recorded first in 1961 by Ray Charles. Then in 1989 came “When The Night Comes” a song that wasn’t a cover, however it was written by hit songwriters in Bryan Adams, Jim Vallance and Diane Warren.

The point of all this.

In the mid-nineties I was in a band. We played three sets each night and got paid $150 each. The set up was bassist/vocalist, drummer and myself on guitar. The first set was originals. Hard rock originals. Think about that for a second. The mid-nineties was very hostile to hard rock bands, however we didn’t care. Anyway the second set involved covers from the sixties, seventies and eighties and the last set was all nineties modern rock songs. It was the second set that got the best applause.

The bassist and I had a knack for re-interpreting  songs. “Stormbringer” and “Knockin On Heavens Door” became one song with music coming from Deep Purple and the lyrics coming from Bob Dylan.

“Foxy Lady” and “Immigrant Song” became another song. “Born To Be Wild” and “Cum On Feel The Noize” was one more. “We Will Rock You” and “Long Way To The Top” also got merged. I am seeing a lot of this cross merging on the internet, especially between Metallica and Megadeth. Fans of the bands are doing their own merging and re-interpretations of the bands classic songs. One song that we didn’t change at all (and played within our originals set) was “Breaking The Law” from Judas Priest. And the grunge/industrial crowds we played to at the time lapped it up. They thought the songs were our own song and we didn’t tell them any different.

Throughout this whole phase, Joe Cocker was in the back of the mind. I kept on asking myself, how would Joe approach this song. Would he slow it down, speed it up, funk it up or just fuck it up.

Hell, our heroes hooked us with cover songs or crossed over into the mainstream because of cover songs. Motley Crue with “Smokin In The Boys Room”, Tesla with “Signs”, Machine Head with “Hallowed Be Thy Name”, Killswitch Engage with “Holy Diver” and many more.

As a musician, there is a lot to learn from re-interpreting other people’s songs. There are some songs that are just perfect for you and relate to you in a way that they could have been written by you. It’s okay to cover songs and to have a career based on your re-interpretations of cover songs.

Rest in peace Joe Cocker, you showed me that music is much more than the clichéd “these songs are my children” point of view.

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