Virtually everyone knows “Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds” was inspired by a drawing (even if some still insist it’s a drug reference) and there really was “Smoke on the Water” at Montreux.
I just read on John Fogerty’s Facebook page that “Down on the Corner” was inspired by an ad for Winnie the Pooh that the Disney company placed in a newspaper. Pooh-bear was enough to get his mind going “Winnie the Pooh and the Pooh Boys”, which became “Willy and the Poor Boys”.
Not kidding.
The Beatles’ “Being for the Benefit of Mr. Kite” was inspired by an old-timey advertising poster.
The title of Stevie Nicks’ hit “Edge of Seventeen” came from a conversation she had with Tom Petty’s then-wife, Jane.
Jane related how she had met Tom “at the age of seventeen,” but due to Jane’s Southern accent, Stevie misheard her as saying, “at the edge of seventeen.” Stevie liked the phrase, and decided to use it as the basis of a song.
Pinball Wizard was written because there was a music critic in NYC who played a lot of pinball. The hope was he would give Tommy a good review and I think he did.
I didn’t know that when I first came across the poster in a head shop. I was delighted to see Beatles lyrics “in the real world”… of 1843, yet.
I’ve always wondered if Lennon knew anything about the life of Pablo Fanque.
Badge, by Eric Clapton got that name when George Harrison wrote the word bridge on the paper he was writing the song on. Eric misread it as badge and it stuck.
While Cornell students, Leo Lipton wrote on Peter Yarrow’s typewriter a childish poem based on an Ogden Nash bit and tossed the paper aside. Yarrow found it a few years later, recorded PUFF THE MAGIC DRAGON with PP&M, and insisted that Lipton get half the royalties.
An infatuated high school student wrote a love poem about Dorothy Sloop, a nearby jazz singer. He gave the poem to a songwriter who turned it into HANG ON SLOOPY, now Ohio’s official state rock song.
The Beatles’ A DAY IN THE LIFE was inspired by a report on the death of their friend, Guinness heir Tara Browne.
And then we have more than a few songs that just dribbled from intoxicated brains. Take IN-A_GADDA-DA-VIDA. Please, take it. :smack:
This was probably obvious to people who grew up in the 1960s, but as a 1980s kid I didn’t realize “This car used to belong to a little old lady from Pasadena” was a stereotypical line Southern California used car salesmen used to assure customers that a car had been well cared for and driven gently. So stereotypical it had become a common joke on television and well known to audiences outside of California. And thus the joke behind the song “The Little Old Lady From Pasadena” was “What if that old lady actually raced her car?” I mean, I had heard the more generic used car salesman line “It used to belong to a little old lady who only drove it to church on Sundays,” and I of course knew old ladies stereotypically drive slowly, but I didn’t really make the connection in my brain between the song and the line used by used car salesmen until I read it on Wikipedia.
So Long, Frank Lloyd Wright by Paul Simon.
Well, that’s the version of the story that I knew, but the rest of Wiki article implies that Simon must have known something about FLW, at least by the time he wrote the song. Who knows, eh?
j
In a 1985 interview in Hitch magazine, James said the title of the song came to him while he was reading the Biblical Book of Revelation:
I took the title from the Book of Revelations [sic] in the Bible, reading about the New Jerusalem. The words jumped out at me, and they’re not together; they’re spread out over three or four verses. But it seemed to go together, it’s my favorite of all my songs and one of our most requested.[1]
Ben Folds Five had an album The Unauthorized Biography of Reinhold Messner based on a fake name one of the members used for a fake ID. They did not know Messner was a real person until they were recording the album.
In 1977, in order to write songs for the Electric Light Orchestra’s next album, Jeff Lynne isolated himself in a rented chalet in the Swiss Alps.
For the first two weeks he was there, the weather was persistently dark and misty, and Lynne suffered from writer’s block. The sun finally came out, giving Lynne a beautiful view of the Alps, and in a burst of inspiration, he wrote the song “Mr. Blue Sky.” (With his writer’s block suddenly gone, he quickly penned the rest of the songs for what became the album Out of the Blue.)
It’s the Nativity Night in Bethlehem. Angels are singing. Cattle are lowing. Sheep are blatting. Magi are still over the horizon. All within and around the manger are joyous. Mary, nestling the Holy Babe, turns to cucked hubby Joseph and says, “Oh Joe, I’m so happy! But what shall we name Him?” Just then a brick falls out of the roof and hits Joseph square on the head. “JESUS CHRIST!” he painfully yells. Mary looks thoughtful. “Yes, that has a nice ring to it.”
Oh wait, that’s not a song. The Ross Bagdasarian aka David Seville WITCH DOCTOR chorus “Ting tang walla-walla bing bang” was an homage to his uncle who had just moved to Walla Walla, Washington.
Willie Dixon’s Little Red Rooster
I first heard this song in 1964, as recorded by the Stones. I was 14. I’m embarrassed to admit how old I was when it dawned on me the song isn’t about chickens.
That poster that inspired Lennon was for a show put on by Pablo Fanque who was a Victorian traveling show impresario
He is buried along with his wife in my hometown of Leeds at St Georges Fields
I guess it’s old news that “Savoy Truffle,” written by George Harrison for the White Album, was about a box of fancy chocolates. Think of the oddly named treats in a Whitman sampler. Creme Tangerine and Montelimar,a Ginger Sling with a Pineapple Heart, etc. “You’ll have to have them all pulled out” (your teeth, that is) was a jokey warning to Eric Clapton, who binged on high-end chocolates.
Pittsburgh rock legend Norman Nardini wrote a song called I Hate A Nickel, Cause It Ain’t A Dime decades ago. People assume it has deep meaning, but when he came up with the line he was replacing a battery in something, trying to pry it open with a coin. All he had was a nickel, but he needed a dime, which is thinner.
