No idea why I remembered this: Commodores got their name randomly from the dictionary:
The Canadian band Crowbar was named after they were fired as Ronnie Hawkins’s backup band and Mr Hawkins remarked: “Those boys could fuck up a crowbar in fifteen seconds”.
Another Canadian band, the Guess Who (most famous for “American Woman” ) were originally known as Chad Allan and the Expressions. Their record label released one of their first singles with the band’s name listed as “Guess Who?” as a publicity stunt, perhaps with the idea that the public would think that the song was by a more famous group playing incognito.
I don’t know if anyone was actually fooled, but the new name stuck and the band was known as the Guess Who from then on.
By 1969 Paul Revere and the Raiders’ shtick of Revolutionary War costumes and first-glass garage rock was losing its appeal. In an attempt to get their music played on the radio, they tried sending out demo records under the alias Pink Puzz. (The album’s one hit single, “Let Me” clearly sounded like old school Raiders, however.)
It sort of worked. The group got some FM radio airplay in Los Angeles until the stations discovered who they really were. The group then released the music under the PRR name, but titled the album “Alias Pink Puzz.”
Similarly, the single “Deseri” from The Mothers of Invention was originally credited to an unknown doo-wop group called Reuben and the Jets.
The Emmylou Harris song Boulder to Birmingham is about the death of Gram Parsons.
The Boomtown Rats song I Don’t Like Mondays is based on a quote from a teenage school shooter, who replied to the question of why she did it with “I don’t like Mondays.”
There was also a David Bowie version. Apparently, record producers realised the song could be a hit in America, so asked for some english lyrics, Paul Anka wrote the ‘My Way’ version.
And the album cover asked the question “Is this just The Mothers of Invention recording under another name in a last ditch attempt to get their cruddy music on the radio?”
I may be the only Rolling Stones fan that this trivia was ‘little known’ to, but I just recently heard that the ‘Dead Flowers’ in the titular Stones song refers to heroin. Dead flowers = the dried opium poppy that the drug is derived from.
I know, duh, right? It’s not like I’m some innocent just learning “the Stones wrote songs about drugs?!? Heavens to Betsy!” There’s clear heroin use right there in the lines:
I’ll be in my basement room
with a needle and a spoon
So I’ve known since I first heard the song that it was at least partially about heroin use. I just always assumed that the ‘dead flowers’ that ‘Little Susie’ sends the singer was some sort of ironic ‘fuck you’ to him.
The same. “Now that you think you’re better than me, you can act shitty and catty (sending ‘dead flowers’) all you want but I’m not going to really care or let it ruin my memories of who you were (‘put roses on your grave’)” is a much more satisfying read on the song lyrics than “Gimme heroin, gimme more heroin, send heroin to my wedding, I need more heroin now”
Here’s the radio spot
The name of the CCR song Green River does not come from an actual river, but from a lime flavored soft drink called Green River which I believe is sold mainly in the Chicago area. I remember both the drink and the song from my childhood but didn’t know of the connection until recently.
Step On by The Happy Mondays is a cover of He’s Gonna Step On You Again by John Kongos. Two snippets about the Happy Mondays’ cover:
Their recording was originally intended for the compilation Rubáiyát: Elektra’s 40th Anniversary for their US label, Elektra. However, having completed the recording, the decided to keep it for themselves and record something else for Elektra (Kongos’ Tokoloshe Man). Good call - Step On became their biggest hit.
The Mondays’ version begins with something not found in the original:
You’re twistin’ my melon man, you know you talk so hip man
You’re twistin’ my melon man, call the cops
This it transpires, was a something Steve McQueen used to say. Shaun Ryder is quoted as saying
The documentary [ Steve McQueen: A Man on the Edge] was first broadcast on PBS in the US in 1988, before it was aired in the UK. Of its influence on ‘Step On’, Ryder told Uncut : “Where did ‘twisting my melon’ come from? A Steve McQueen documentary I saw. Apparently, he used to walk into his director’s office and argue. And there was this guy doing an impression of him saying, ‘Oh man, he’s twisting my melon’. So I thought, ‘Oh, I’ll just have that.’ It’s a great phrase, innit?”
Source: https://faroutmagazine.co.uk/happy-mondays-inspired-steve-mcqueen/
Song:
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The opening guitar riff in Life in the Fast Lane originated as a limbering-up exercise Joe Walsh had learned somewhere. When he had just joined the Eagles, he was idly playing that in the rehearsal studio. “What’s that? Did you write it?..So it’s not copyrighted?” And a song was built around it.
So basically, almost exactly like the opening riff of “Sweet Child o’ Mine”.
Except that the “Sweet Child o’ Mine” riff sounds exactly like what it started as, a simple limbering-up riff, and the ‘Fast Lane’ riff sounds like a fully-formed, actual song riff.
Guess what I’m saying is, Joe Walsh > Slash.