thelegendsofmusictv

Talking Heads performing “Psycho Killer” Live on the Old Grey Whistle Test “Psycho Killer” takes the listener straight into the head of a deranged murderer. It all started when David Byrne decided to write something with shock value in the vein of Alice Cooper. In the liner notes of Once in a Lifetime: The Best of Talking Heads, David wrote: “When I started writing this (I got help later), I imagined Alice Cooper doing a Randy Newman-type ballad. Both the Joker and Hannibal Lecter were much more fascinating than the good guys. Everybody sort of roots for the bad guys in movies.” As the song progresses, the lyrics get even more capricious. If you source the origins of the song you’ll find out that it was written in 1973 at the Rhode Island School of Design where David Byrne and drummer Chris Frantz had a band called The Artistics. That makes this the first Talking Heads song. When Byrne presented the song, he explained that he wanted a Japanese section in the bridge, but when he asked a girl who spoke the language to come up with some murderous words, she understandably freaked out. Frantz’ girlfriend, Tina Weymouth, spoke French, so they had her write a French part for the bridge instead. She drew inspiration from the Norman Bates character in the 1960 Alfred Hitchcock thriller Psycho, which influenced the verse: “You start a conversation you can’t even finish it, You’re talking a lot, but you’re not saying anything, When I have nothing to say, my lips are sealed, Say something once, why say it again?”. David Byrne and Chris Frantz played this a few times in 1974 with their band The Artistics. Later that year, after Frantz and Tina Weymouth graduated from RISD (with degrees in painting), they moved in together with Byrne in a slummy apartment in New York City. Tina became their bass player, and they called their new group the Talking Heads. After adding guitarist Jerry Harrison to the group, they released their debut album, Talking Heads: 77, in 1977. Released as a single, “Psycho Killer” was their first chart hit, reaching #92 in March 1978. #Music #TalkingHeads

Promotional Footage of The Rolling Stones performing “Brown Sugar” on Top of the Pops in March of 1971 “Brown Sugar” features Mick Jagger singing about slaves from Africa that were sold in New Orleans and misused by their white owners. The subject matter is controversial, but the music makes it come across as a fun sounding up-beat Rock ’N’ Roll number. According to Bill Wyman, it was partially inspired by a black backup singer named Claudia Lennear who was one of Ike Turner’s Ikettes. She and Jagger met when The Stones toured with Turner in 1969. David Bowie also wrote his Aladdin Sane track “Lady Grinning Soul” about Lennear. The band recorded this song at Muscle Shoals Studio in Alabama before debuting it at their tragic Altamont Speedway concert on the 6th of December, 1969. Jimmy Johnson, who was a guitar player for the Muscle Shoals Rhythm Section (also known as “The Swampers”), engineered the sessions that produced this song as well as “Wild Horses” and “You Gotta Move.” The Rolling Stones engineer Glyn Johns then added overdubs in England (including horns), but he left Johnson’s mix intact. Johnson says that Johns called him from England to compliment him on the mix. #Music #TheRollingStones

New York Dolls playing “Personality Crisis” Live on the 19th of October, 1973 on the Midnight Special ⁣⁣ When the New York Dolls unleashed their debut album on Mercury Records it seemed like they were on path to ignite a musical revolution. Their signature sound made them one of the few bands on the planet to successfully unite Punk Rock, Glam Rock, and Hard Rock under one umbrella. In fact, their sound foreshadowed the punk movement by almost three years as they heavily drew on the “dirty rock & roll” found in the sound of the Stones, David Bowie, and T.Rex. They amalgamated all of this into one cohesive that it made them the quintessential cult band. What they lacked in musical sophistication, they made up with attitude and this elevated them back to the roots of rock ’n’ roll with a rawness that spoke the same language as disenchanted youth everywhere.⁣ ⁣⁣ What do you think of the New York Dolls? Leave a comment, I’d love to hear your thoughts!⁣⁣ #Music #NewYorkDolls

Promotional Footage of the Buzzcocks performing “Ever Fallen In Love (With Someone You Shouldn’t’ve)” on Top Of The Pops in 1978 “The song dates back to November 1977. We were on a roll. It was only six months since we’d finished the first album. Up in Manchester this was what we used to dream of... a whirlwind of tours, interviews, TV. We were living the life. One night in Edinburgh we were in a guest house TV lounge watching the musical Guys and Dolls. This line leaped out - ‘Have you ever fallen in love with someone you shouldn’t have?’ The next day the van stopped outside a post office and I wrote the lyrics there. I did have a certain person in mind, but I’ll save that for my kiss’n’tell. The music just seemed to follow, fully formed.” Pete Shelley describing how this song came to life in an interview with the Guardian #Music #Buzzcocks

The Cure performing “Disintegration” Live at the Primavera Sound Festival in Brazil in 2013 “Disintegration” is The Cure’s undisputed masterpiece. However, without its title track, “Disintegration” would never carry the weight and mythology it does today. That song completely rejects traditional songwriting structure and it feels like Robert Smith disintegrating in real time. There’s no urgency to reach a chorus or attempt to make the experience comfortable or accessible. The Cure allows atmosphere, repetition, and tension to consume the listener until the music itself feels emotionally unstable. What makes “Disintegration” so extraordinary is the level of control behind that chaos. Every delayed guitar, every crashing drum pattern, every exhausted lyric serves the feeling of psychological decay. Robert Smith was truly documenting the sound of a human being falling apart. #Music #TheCure

Focus performing “Hocus Pocus” Live on the 5th of October, 1973 on the Midnight Special This song takes the form of a rondo with it’s alternation between a powerful rock chord riff with short drum solos and then varied solo “verses” that include yodeling, organ playing, accordion, scat singing, flute riffs, and whistling. Musically, the song came together very quickly in the studio Drummer Pierre van der Linden started playing some two-bar fills, and guitarist Jan Akkerman came in with a tune. Focus frontman Thijs van Leer decided this would be a good time to yodel, something he had never done before. “Everyone considered it a very funny joke,” he said. “But we found ourselves drawn back to the song.” Source: - Songfacts.com #Music #Focus

The Police performing “So Lonely” Live at the Hatfield Polytechnic in 1979 Sting // “People thrashing out three chords didn’t really interest us musically. Reggae was accepted in punk circles and musically more sophisticated, and we could play it, so we veered off in that direction. I mean let’s be honest here, ‘So Lonely’ was unabashedly culled from ‘No Woman No Cry’ by Bob Marley & the Wailers. Same chorus. What we invented was this thing of going back and forth between thrash punk and reggae. That was the little niche we created for ourselves.” #Music #ThePolice

Promotional Footage of Elvis Presley performing “Don’t Be Cruel” on the 28th of October, 1956 on the Ed Sullivan Show Why was Elvis Presley only filmed only from the waist up on the Ed Sullivan show? By early June 1956, Elvis Presley had become a national sensation after appearing national TV seven times. However, his appearance on the 5th of June Presley’s profile exploded. He made the decision to perform “Hound Dog” and this would be the first time the entire country would see it on the small screen. The end result was a performance that captured the nation’s attention and some even labeled it as “controversial”. The controversy carried forward to when he was booked to appear on the Ed Sullivan Show months later. The conversation surrounding his appearance was that the public were either hot with Elvis fever or sick with fear of the “youth-corrupting” musician. So a compromise was reached where Elvis could appear on television, but it was demanded he be shot from the waist up only. Nonetheless, Ed was extremely wary of featuring the singer on the show but he couldn’t ignore the skyrocketing ratings other shows received when they featured Elvis. Elvis was contracted to make a total of three appearances on the show and the first of two showed the rocker head-to-toe. His final appearance was broadcasted without a pelvis in sight. Despite the censorship, his appearance cemented his status as a Rock ’N’ Roll icon transforming him from a regional sensation into a global superstar while legitimizing rock and roll for mainstream America. #Music #ElvisPresley

The Music Video to “Heart of Glass” by Blondie (Directed by Stanley Dorfman) “Heart of Glass” sources its origins to a demo created by Debbie Harry and Chris Stein shortly after they first met. They didn’t have a proper title for the song, and would refer to it as “The Disco Song.” According to Rolling Stone magazine’s Top 500 Songs, Harry and Stein wrote the song in their dingy New York apartment and keyboardist Jimmy Destri provided the synthesizer hook. It wasn’t their intention, but in a way they bridged the gap between punk and disco. In an intro, Jimmy had this to say about the song: “Chris always wanted to do disco. We used to do ‘Heart Of Glass’ to upset people.” Debbie Harry discussed the disco implications in 1000 UK #1 Hits by Jon Kutner and Spencer Leigh saying: “When we did ‘Heart Of Glass’ it wasn’t too cool in our social set to play disco. But we did it because we wanted to be uncool. It was based around a Roland Rhythm Machine and the backing took over 10 hours to get down.” During the song’s production, the sound of the CR-78 drum machine was merged with that of drummer Clem Burke’s real drums, which was no easy task in the analog age. Clem’s inspiration for his drum parts of the song was taken from the groove of the Bee Gees’ “Stayin Alive.” #Music #Blondie

AC/DC performing “Live Wire” Live on the 13th of July, 1976 in London for “Super Pop / “Rollin’ Bolan”

Roxy Music performing “Re-Make/Re-Model” Live on West German Television “Musikladen” “Re-Make/Re-Model” features Bryan Ferry taking inspiration from Derek Boshier’s 1962 painting Re-Think/Re-Entry. This individual was a pioneer of British pop art and go on to design the album covers for David Bowie’s Lodger and Let’s Dance. The recording begins with the background ambiance of a cocktail party before launching into the song. In an interview with the Guardian, this is what Bryan Ferry had to say about it: “It seemed like a good idea to start our first album with a party scene, a kind of celebration. We used sound effects tapes and added our own voices to the party to make it more real.” Simultaneously, the song concludes with every band member performing an instrumental solo, with some of them “quoting” from a famous piece of music. For example, Graham Simpson references the bassline from The Beatles “Daytripper” while Mackay imitates the brass section from “The Ride of the Valkyries.” Having spent the entirety of the song playing lead guitar, Manzanera then uses his solo to strum the chords from Duane Eddy’s cover of the “Peter Gunn Theme.” Lyrically, Bryan explained in an interview that Eno and MacKay’s backing vocal chorus of “CPL 593H” was the number plate of the car in which the woman is riding. #Music #RoxyMusic

The Music Video to “Imagine” by John Lennon “Imagine” was born out of several poems from Yoko Ono’s 1964 book Grapefruit. There was one in particular that Capitol Records reproduced on the back cover of the original Imagine LP titled “Cloud Piece”, which said: “Imagine the clouds dripping, dig a hole in your garden to put them in.” When asked about the song’s meaning during a December 1980 interview with David Sheff for Playboy magazine, Lennon told Sheff that Dick Gregory had given Ono and him a Christian prayer book, which inspired the concept behind “Imagine”. He said: The concept of positive prayer ... If you can imagine a world at peace, with no denominations of religion—not without religion but without this my God-is-bigger-than-your-God thing—then it can be true ... the World Church called me once and asked, “Can we use the lyrics to ‘Imagine’ and just change it to ‘Imagine one religion’?” That showed [me] they didn’t understand it at all. It would defeat the whole purpose of the song, the whole idea.” Both these influences helped shaped the idea and lyrics behind the song. The origins of the music behind the track can be traced to a piano motif named “John’s Piano Piece”, which came to life during the Beatles “Get Back” sessions. However, it wasn’t until early 1971 that the rest of the song was written. John & Yoko co-produced the song and album with Phil Spector who commented this in an interview saying: He knew what we were going to do ... It was going to be John making a political statement, but a very commercial one as well ... I always thought that ‘Imagine’ was like the national anthem.” #Music #JohnLennon