I"m cooking dinner for my kids, listening to my version of Christmas Carols–oldies from the 1950’s-60’s, as played on the local Akron Univ. station. The program some wonderful stuff on Sunday. Things I remember, and things I don’t. That’s the problem.
When I was growing up, The Rolling Stones’ original version couldn’t be played on the air. They had to change it to “Let’s spend some time together.” Today, of course, you can say “Let’s fuck our brains out, bitch!”
But the version I just heard(“night”) didn’t quite sound like the version(time) I remember from my youth. Am I just misremembering or was there a totally different version? I mean the song just didn’t sound the same.
The story I’ve heard is that the original version played on the radio, but the Stones had to change it to “spend some time together” for the Ed Sullivan show.
No one stopped “Let’s Spend the Night Together” from appearing on the radio. It was released and didn’t go particularly high (maybe the words had something to do with that, but it may also have been because it was the B Side of “Ruby Tuesday,” which went to #1). However, there was only one version of the song released.
Ed Sullivan asked the Stones not to sing the lyric on his show, but he also asked the Doors to change the lyrics to “Light My Fire” (or rather, his assistants did). Morrison sang the regular lyrics (or course).
What sometimes happens is that radio station speed up songs slightly to fit in more ads. This practice came a bit later than the song, but who knows. It does make the song sound “off” when you hear it at the correct speed.
Chuck. Your answer makes sense. It just sounded a little “off” to me.
As to your mentioning that stations didn’t always play records at the same speed, I told this once before:
In about 1964-65, Sher had a hit, “Bang, Bang.” Being an immature youth, I constantly searched the dial for the song. One day, after lunch, some of us were in a dorm room before going to lab. There were TWO radios going at the same time. I wanted to hear that song. So I started changing the channels on one radio while my roomate searched stations on his radio. We almost simultaneously found the song playing(but on different stations!). What happened next proves your assertion.
Sation “A” was playing the song about 3-5 seconds ahead of station “B.” We left them both on. At the end of the song, station “B” finished about 2-3 seconds ahead of station “A.”
Station “B” billed themselves as playing more songs per hour than the competition. Now you know “the rest of the story.”
Chuck. You suggested the practice of speeding up songs took place later than “Let’s Spend the Night Together.” And moments after I posted my reply, I had a sudden GQ type urge to see when that happened.
Ruby Tuesday seems to have reached #1 in 2/4/67. If “Night” was on the flip-sde, it must have been on the radio about the same time?
Cher hit #1 with Bang. Bang! on 3/26/66.
I’m sometimes in awe of your expertise on music and other subjects. You can now add to your body of knowlege that the practice of spinning discs faster took place prior to 1967.