I'm old enough that I remember when this was a hit ("before your mother was born..."?). I for one always assumed it was a Three Dog Night original. Even as I checked to be sure there was copy I could post together with my remarks this week. I noted that there were other versions (perhaps with a slightly different title, but the same lyrics), including one from Harry Nilsson. Cool. I have already had a bit of an uninformed soft spot for Nilsson. I mean "Coconut" and "Everybody's Talkin", c'mon.
To me, about as well-known as Three Dog Night's "Shambala" and "One is the Loneliest Number". I'll use the Nilsson version as an extra for this post.
Fact is, there are many. Versions, that is.
I've said it before: this is where I get off doing this. Most weeks I end up a little wiser than I was.
As you either already knew or have gleaned from my trajectory, in the process of digging (in this case merely scratching the surface) I realized that Three Dog Night didn't write the song.
Fact is, there are many. Versions, that is.The Wiki notes that Al Kooper came out with a version in '69. Musicians on that - his first - include a handful of musicians I have previously brought up here: Steve Winwood and Jim Capaldi among others.
As to the premise of the song - the assumption that 1 is lonely - it seems to me that the issue is more a state of mind. 1 is how you meditate. Alone in tune with yourself and with the rest of whatever is out there. 1 is lonely when you feel the need for more than 1, but that is definitely not always the case. "Give me a break", "Leave me alone" ... Nilsson says as much:
Two can be as bad as one
One is the number divided by two
[say what?]
John Hiatt is just terrific, one of the best, if not in sales, certainly in terms of influence and output, up there, in my book, with Neil Young and Bruce Springsteen. When he's good, he's very, very good and when he's bad, well, I haven't encountered that yet. And Bring the Family, the album from which this song comes, is possibly one of his best, positively enhanced by the backing band on hand. Backing band? O, just Ry Cooder, Nick Lowe and Jim Keltner. And yet it was born out of near desperation, a banknote or so away from ruin. Alone in the Dark, the feature song of this piece, epitomises the tight but loose feel of the disc, and is often overlooked amongst some of the other goodies on board. The lyrics may reflect a differing loneliness and a differing dark from these dangerous days, but the mood sure fits.
Ahead of this time, Hiatt had been a slogging workaday singer-songwriter, starting his career as a pen for hire. When Three Dog Night hit the top 40 with one of his, a recording contract beckoned, although, over the ensuing seven discs, scattered across various labels, more money came from royalties recouped, as the likes of Roseanne Cash and Willie Nelson recorded his songs, than he made from his own originals. Even the mighty Geffen label tried and failed to break him. This was arguably not helped by Hiatt being a drunken cuss who hadn't endeared himself to label bosses. So, newly sober, with a bunch of songs he had lost faith in, straits were indeed dire. Luckily the maverick UK label Demon still believed in him, and could offer a threadbare budget to record them. (The story of Demon makes for interesting reading, established by the earlier team behind Stiff records, Radar and F-Beat.)
Bring the Family, released in 1987, is a joy, from start to finish, the four musicians laying down a lean muscle honed from their collective road and studio experiences, Hiatt's holler a celebrant to his limited range: who needs more notes when you can do this much with these? Plus the songs, ten gems that can crack open a smile just from memory. Even if you don't know them, you know them, and even if you do, even over know them from the myriad cover versions of many, the freshness and vitality of the originals stand head and shoulder over most of those. It is hard to believe the whole project took only four days, Lowe sharing a motel room with Hiatt to keep costs down, Cooder delaying his departure a few hours as the final song was hastily written.
Neither the schedules of the four musicians, nor, then, the budget could allow this line-up any time on the road. True, Hiatt rounded up some likely culprits, including perhaps the only man who could reasonably ever deputise for Cooder, bayou slide master, Sonny Landreth, and they hit the trail. Following in the slipstream of Bring the Family, this crew, the Goners, produced a second deal breaking LP for Hiatt, Slow Turning, only a whisker away from being as good as its predecessor, being merely excellent. Hiatt was on a roll, with these and his next seven records all making substantive waves in the Billboard chart.
But the dream team were not done. In 1992 the diaries of Hiatt, Lowe, Cooder and Keltner finally realigned, and they went back into the studio. This time a band, Little Village, also the name of the sole studio offering, having ditched the earlier, and better, working title of Hiatus, and this time a pooling of resources, rather than just a backing band for Hiatt. The songs were all co-writes between the four, and whilst Hiatt sings the majority, Lowe took lead on two, Cooder on one. Perhaps there was too much hope, but the lightning failed to strike twice, and it was a deeply disappointing set. Nick Lowe later said they were given too much time. The subsequent tour was a little better, live sets testifying to that, allowing a presentation of some Bring the Family favourites, as well as scattering of Cooder's solo repertoire. One could sense a simmer of "sibling" rivalry, maybe some resentment that Hiatt was drawing more focus over Cooder's own sense of entitlement. It all ended, apparently, in tears.
Hiatt remains on the road, as do his former compadres, occasionally sharing a bill with one or another, all now senior statesmen and rightly so. Hiatt's recent work is, in my opinion, still of top quality and can stand close to the height of this period. Give him a go.
I veer from the standard "post a song with extra" because I just couldn't get into my original idea. It's not that Lou Reed's Claim to Fame has no claim to fame, but ... it *is* just one more of a few hundred songs that happen to have the word "extra" in the lyrics. I wanted something a little more entertaining at this time of year.
There must have been like a million albums produced since the invention of the phonograph, and it must be a perennial quandary for the artist and the producer to come up with something that makes yours stand out. Sometimes good music in and of itself isn't enough. I think of my copy of Dave Mason's Alone Together, which was pressed onto somewhat psychedelic multi colored swirling vinyl - kind of unique. I've seen albums with funky shapes.
One album with something "extra" that sticks in my mind is Sticky Fingers, with its actual zipper "sewn" into the album cover. You can't help but pull it down to see what's ...
And aside from this kind of attraction, lots of albums have included band-related posters.
But going to a more extreme additional form of entertainment for the fans ... (and these - for the most part - are generally verified hearsay. Sue me if I'm wrong)
Cheech and Chong's Big Bambu included a huge rolling paper. No surprise there.
Sgt. Pepper's included a a cardboard page of cutouts - epaulettes, moustache, badges ....
ELO's Out of the Blue included a cardboard cutout of their iconic spaceship.
Three Dog Nights' Seven Separate Fools album came with seven oversize playing cards.
Alice Cooper's Schools Out came with paper panties as a wrapper.
As Darius notes, there are plenty of great July 4th songs to choose from, but that was never my personal intention in selecting the <July> theme. lyrics.com shows ~ 2000 songs with July in the lyrics (some repetition), so there's a lot to consider. Somewhere in that long list, among others that I would/could write about, I picked out "Mercy on Broadway". A song I wasn't familiar with, but a name that I was.
When I think Laura Nyro, I think "Wedding Bell Blues". On the second round around, I think "Eli's Coming" [Three Dog Night]
and "Stoned Soul Picnic" [The Fifth Dimension]
and "And When I Die" [Blood, Sweat & Tears].
For these, it's someone else's version of her powerful song-writing that comes to mind first. But rather than diminish Nyro's legacy, the fact that these greats chose to cover her work and hit the top of the charts with them only embellish her rightful place.
On the one hand, I want to lament our loss - Nyro died age 49 of ovarian cancer - the same age as her mother of the same. That IS sad. On the other hand, she left behind a style and a musical repertoire that is still strong decades later, a larger legacy than most can aspire to.
Come to "Mercy on Broadway". Yeah, it includes the per-requisite <July> in the lyrics - more than once in fact (unlike some of the other 2000 in the July lyrics list, where the word shows up once), and she uses month names in various other songs as well - in tune with the seasons?
Nyro was a New Yorker, so her reference to Broadway is apropos. Her references to the fare of the side-streets is equally real - she played the streets and subways of the city in the 1960s.
But it's the combination of her vocal shifts and, as Elton John put it, her "rhythmic and melodic changes" that place her apart. It's her cross over between R&B, jazz, blues and pop that made her songs so accessible to all the other bands. Like several other songs she wrote, it builds/morphs from jazzy blues to full out rocking by the end of the song.
For the record, the Christine Spero Group put out an entire album of Nero songs, but it doesn't include "Mercy".
Shamb(h)ala is the Buddhist “Pure Land” (Wikipedia). In the
1960s and 70s, the West adopted it as a mythical spiritual land of perfection
and peace. Like many beliefs and concepts from the hippie 1960s and 70s,
knowledge about the philosophy/concept was based on “fragmented accounts” and
uninformed stories. It was a land
somewhere around Tibet.
What was important for the “peace/love” hippies was its
mythical value as a land of inspiration and promise. In many ways, it was
nearly a synonym for Shangri-la: a hidden, mystic land in the Himalayas where everyone lived and worked for the good
of mankind: a lot like the American (hippe) commune.
Three Dog Night – still touring today – hit their prime in
the late 60s and early 70s. The Internet tells us that Shambala – typical of
most Three Dog Night songs – was not of their creation. It did, however, rise
pretty high on the charts in 1973. They sang:
Wash away my sorrow, wash away my shambala Everyone is lucky, everyone is kind On the road to Shambhala
Three Dog Night is credited with 7 Gold records. Among their
hits that you ought to/are probably familiar with are: One (written by Harry Nilsson), Momma Told Me Not to Come Joy to the World
Easy to be Hard
Three Dog Night is the only group I know that had three lead singers. (Second lie. As some of you pointed out, there are many groups with 3 lead singers.) It's a testament to how bad my late 60s tween radio quality was—or to how clueless I was—in that I never realized this until much, much later. All I was aware of at the time was how cool I thought they were. Some things never change.
Liar, like most of Three Dog Night's top ten songs, was a cover tune. This one was penned in 1970 by Argent member Russ Ballard. They also managed to make hits out of tunes by Paul McCartney Williams (third lie!) (An Old Fashioned Love Song), a hit from the musical Hair (Easy to Be Hard), Randy Newman (Mama Told Me Not To Come), Harry Nilsson (One), Laura Nyro (Eli's Coming), Hoyt Axton (Never Been to Spain, Joy to the World), and Elton John (Your Song).
I want to be with you as long As you want me to, I won't move away, Ain't that what you said? Ain't that what you said? Ain't that what you said? Liar, liar, liar.
Am I the last person on the planet to learn that Randy Newman wrote this song?!? - don't answer that... :-)
In doing a bit of research, I see that Eric Burdon & The Animals released the tune in the late-60's... but my first awareness of it was the version by Three Dog Night, which will always remind me of high school: alcohol and drugs and prom-iscuity... oh my!
As with most songs, the composer, Harry Nilsson, has the best performance of the three. Nilsson had originally released it as an independent single in 1963, under the pseudonym Bo Pete, to some small local radio airplay. Probably the most covered song of his entire catalogue, One is a straightforward tune about loneliness and the desperation it brings.
Three Dog Night covered One in 1969 with a completely different arrangement, more fleshed out with thick layers of instrumentation, as opposed to Nilsson's simple approach. The great success of their version (it made its way to #1 on the US charts) launched them on the road to covering other previously charted songs, such as Randy Newman's Mama Told Me Not to Come, Laura Nyro's Eli's Coming, Russ Ballard of Argent's Liar, Hoyt Axton's Joy to the World, among others. It's not my favorite take of the song, but one can still appreciate the fine Pop craftsmanship at work.
Aimee Mann's approach is the most stark of the three, which I feel serves the song well, since it was the opening of the 1999 American drama, Magnolia, Paul Thomas Anderson's film about isolation and the human condition. Mann composed the soundtrack along with her husband, Michael Penn and fellow bandmate, Jon Brion.
One can be the loneliest number - Harry Nilsson did a great job in song explaining how important interpersonal relationships can be to our humanity. Each of these three versions are unique unto themselves, the true proof of artistry is how musicians turn their interpretations into vehicles of distinctive self-expression, which all accomplish with much brilliance.
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