On March 20, 1982, Joan Jett and the Blackheart’s “I Love Rock ‘n’ Roll” hit number one on Billboard’s pop chart. After the breakup of Jett’s band The Runaways, she previously had a modest hit from her first post-Runaways album Bad Reputation (1980) with a cover of Lesley Gore’s “You Don’t Own Me.” But the title track of her second album, I Love Rock ‘n’ Roll, gave Joan Jett & the Blackhearts one of the all-time classic songs about rock music.
A British group named the Arrows had released “I Love Rock ‘n’ Roll” in 1975, but the song was not a hit in the U.S. Jett heard the song when she was touring with the Runaways, so years later she recorded her own version, taking it to the top of the U.S. charts. By then, the Arrows had disbanded.
But of course, nobody comes close to the rock ‘n’ roll talents and attitude of Joan Jett, who still performs and heads her own record label, Blackheart Records. Rock on.
What is your favorite Joan Jett song? Leave your two cents in the comments.
Bruce Springsteen explained that the lick for “Badlands” was taken from “Don’t Let Me Be Misunderstood” by the Animals.
During a 2012 talk at the South by Southwest (SXSW) music conference, Bruce Springsteen explained that he found the lick for “Badlands,” which appeared on Darkness on the Edge of Town (1978), in “Don’t Let Me Be Misunderstood” by the Animals. Then he exclaimed, “Listen up youngsters, this is how successful theft is accomplished!”
The video of the entire speech is no longer on YouTube, but there are segments available, including the video below, which is set to start where he begins talking about the Animals.
In the rest of the speech, Springsteen explained the role that music has played in his life, including Elvis, Roy Orbison, and the Beatles. He discussed The Animals, complete with an acoustic rendition of “We Got to Get Out of This Place,” concluding, “that’s every song I’ve every written.”
I found the story about the “Badlands” riff interesting because I had not made the connection. But one may hear it now that he pointed it out. Here are the Animals performing “Don’t Let Me Be Misunderstood” on The Ed Sullivan Show. The lick appears at several points, including the beginning and the end of the song.
Here is Springsteen performing “Badlands” at the Pinkpop festival in 2009.
Can you hear it? He did not mention the lyrics, but one might wonder whether “Don’t Let Me Be Misunderstood” also inspired the “understood” line in the “Badlands” chorus: “We’ll keep pushing ’til it’s understood / And these Badlands start treating us good.”
After the speech, Springsteen performed at SXSW and was joined onstage by Eric Burdon, the lead singer of the Animals (Chicago Tribune review here). So apparently there are no hard feelings about the larceny — or Springsteen’s comments earlier in the speech about how Burdon’s ugliness made him realize he could be a rock star too.
What do you think? Leave your two cents in the comments.
As regular readers of Chimesfreedom know, I am a Steve Earle fan. So you might imagine my delight a few years ago while visiting a shop in Galway on my first trip to Ireland, on the radio I heard Steve Earle’s “Galway Girl” from Transcendental Blues (2000), one of my favorite CDs. In this day and age of worldwide communications and travel, it should not be surprising that an artist is popular around the world. And Earle often has talked about his love of the country and Galway, in particular, explaining that he finds “poetry in the rocks of Ireland.” Still, hearing the familiar song contributed to making the island inhabited by some of my ancestors seem even more like home.
In the performance above, Earle is joined by Sharon Shannon, a fiddle and button accordion player who recorded the song with Earle on her own CD, Diamond Mountain Sessions (2001). In the video above, she plays the accordion, and she plays with a number of artists in different versions including the below version with Mundy. Her recording with Mundy became a national hit, and you can see why this rousing version is so popular.
Mundy and others have performed the song in the Irish Gaelic language. I found one version without much description, so here are “Kevin Mundy and Keith” (neither apparently related to the Mundy from the above video) performing “Cailín na Gaillimhe.”
With Earle’s song becoming an Irish classic, it shows that a great song is not limited by borders. Have a safe and happy St. Patrick’s Day.
What is your favorite Irish tune? Leave your two cents in the comments.
On the Ides of March (March 15) in 1972, Francis Ford Coppola’s The Godfather (1972) opened in theaters. Both Coppola, who was only 31 when he signed on to direct the film, and the book’s author Mario Puzo fought together to convince Paramount Pictures to cast Marlin Brando as Vito Corleone, despite the studio’s concerns about Brando’s notorious moody behavior.
Orson Welles and Edgar G. Robinson, among others were considered for the lead role, and Burt Lancaster reportedly sought the role too. It is interesting but hard to imagine anyone besides Brando as the Godfather.
Coppola and Puzo were right about the casting, of course, as Brando went on to win the Best Actor Academy Award, although he famously sent Sacheen Littlefeather to refuse the award on his behalf. The film also won Best Picture and Best Adapted Screenplay. Now, the movie is considered one of the greatest of all time, with a 100% critics rating on Rotten Tomatoes.
The film went on to spawn two sequels, but in recent years Coppola has argued that it should have ended with the first film. He stated that the first movie “wrapped up everything” and “[t]o make more than one Godfather was just greed.” Do you agree? Leave your two cents in the comments. Bonus Godfather Trivia: For the anniversary, Time Entertainment has “40 things You Didn’t Know About The Godfather.”
In the last few weeks, many have focused on Bruce Springsteen’s new album, Wrecking Ball. All of the news reminds me that there was already a great album with same name from when Emmylou Harris released her Wrecking Ball in 1995. The Daniel Lanois production and the atmospheric sound of the album created a career-changing sound for Harris. Allmusic argued that the album might have been the culmination of all of Harris’s work up until then, calling it “a leftfield masterpiece, the most wide-ranging, innovative, and daring record in a career built on such notions.” I fell in love with the album immediately, and seeing Harris perform the songs in New Orleans sealed it for me. Just consider three great songs from that CD.
First, the opening song on the album sets the stage for the Lanois production touch with one of his songs, “Where Will I Be.” The question asked in the song — “Oh where oh where will I be. . . when that trumpets sounds” — reflects a theme running through many songs on the album of trying to find one’s place in the world and the universe, whether it be with love, family, or something spiritual.
Later on the album, Harris showed her great taste in music by covering one of Steve Earle’s most heartbreaking songs, “Goodbye” from his Train A Comin’ (1995) album. I love Earle’s version but Harris is the only cover I have heard that captures the aching in the song. On the album, Earle loaned his guitar playing to aid Harris’s voice in creating a great version of the song with one of the greatest lines of all time about a past love, “I can’t remember if we said goodbye.”
Finally, the album also features her cover of Bob Dylan’s religious masterpiece, “Every Grain of Sand” from his Shot of Love (1981) album. In 2003, Harris performed the song at Johnny Cash’s funeral with Sheryl Crow. This video is from San Francisco’s Hardly Strictly Bluegrass Festival in 2010. Even though the camera is a little shaky, it captures Harris in fine form with Buddy Miller helping out on guitar (on the CD, Steve Earle played guitar on this song too).
And those are only three songs on Wrecking Ball, which in addition to Steve Earle, included guest appearances by Lucinda Williams and Neil Young with songs by those two artists as well as a beautiful cover of Gillian Welch’s “Orphan Girl.” I will not dare to say which Wrecking Ball album is the best, but there is certainly room on you iPod for both of these Wrecking Balls.
On March 20, 1982, Joan Jett and the Blackheart’s “I Love Rock ‘n’ Roll” hit number one on Billboard’s pop chart. After the breakup of Jett’s band The Runaways, she previously had a modest hit from her first post-Runaways album Bad Reputation (1980) with a cover of Lesley Gore’s “You Don’t Own Me.” But the title track of her second album, I Love Rock ‘n’ Roll, gave Joan Jett & the Blackhearts one of the all-time classic songs about rock music.
