It’s funny to consider that “Mony, Mony” and it’s coarse audience-participation bit is all owed to the Mutual Of New York Insurance Company.
Have a party:
Not only that, but he got co-writing credit because the section he sings…
“I want my… I want my… I want my MTV.”
is a note-for-note mimic of the Police’s
“Don’t stand so… don’t stand so… don’t stand so close to me.”
Paul McCartney’s real first name was James. He changed it because there was already a semi-famous James McCartney in England at the time.
In “Loving You” by Minnie Riperton, Minnie sings “…Maya, Maya, Maya…” in the outro. “Maya” isn’t just scat-singing, it’s the name of her daughter.
In the intro to Aerosmith’s Sweet Emotion, those aren’t maracas or even a cabasa. Steven was shaking a sugar packet.
I don’t think he ever “changed” it; AFAIK he was always known as Paul, just as his brother Michael has also always been known by his middle name (his first name being Peter).
Im really going to need a cite for that…
- Huge aerosmith fan/Percussionist
Speaking of McCarney’s brother, Mike McCartney changed his professional name to Mike McGear after the Beatles success so he wouldn’t be making it on Paul’s coattails. He played for a group called Scaffold, the only rock group to have one of their songs reprinted in The Oxford Book of 20th Century Verse. The song/poem “Goodbat Nightman” was written by noted poet Roger McGough, a member of Scaffold; McGear is credited, too, so probably helped with the music.
The lyrics to Sheryl Crow’s “All I Want to Do” were found by Crow in a poetry book by Wyn Cooper. Crow and her band added music to it, and tracked down Cooper and give him songwriter credit. He’s made somewhere around $50K from it, by far his best payday as a poet.
I heard it on a radio show a long time ago. But in doing a Google search, a number of pages repeat the claim, including this interview with Steven Tyler.
well, Don Maclean (of American Pie fame) tried to steal my dad’s guitar at a folk festival in the 60’s. Other than that, I got nuthin’.
Ringo is the only ex-Beatle to have back-to-back #1 hits: “Photograph” and “You’re Sixteen.”
[highjack]
This doesn’t really qualify as trivia, but does anyone else think that the background music to “Donkey Kong” arcade game sounds just like the bass line from the Beatles’ “The Ballad of John & Yoko”?
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It’s a good thing that Apple isn’t the type to file lawsuits.
Yeah, but since the other three stopped contributing good songs to his albums, he’s also the only ex-Beatle to have back-to-back decades without a hit record.
I’m sure you Radiohead fans already know this, but I was surprised to discover that they retooled the Hollies’ “The Air That I Breathe” for this song. So much so that they gave them partial songwriting credit.
More Police trivia…
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The titles of the first three albums were an attempt to sound foreign and exotic, but in no particular language. So Outlandos D’Amour = Outlaws of Love, Reggatta de Blanc = White Reggae, and Zenyatta Mondatta… well, that’s a riff off of Jomo Kenyatta’s name, the concept of “zen,” and Mondatta means “world.” Zenyatta Mondatta was at one time going to be called Triblondo Mondo Domino (Three blonds rule the world.)
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The members of the band were not naturally light blonds. They dyed their hair to get a gig in a Wrigley’s chewing gum commercial and continued to do so throughout their career.
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Stewart Copeland’s dad, Miles Copeland, Jr., was a high-ranking CIA operative. Hence, the Copelands grew up in exotic locales like Egypt and Lebanon. The law enforcement theme runs deep in the Copeland brothers’ business ventures: Stewart founded The Police; Miles III founded IRS - International Record Syndicate (home of R.E.M.); and Ian founded FBI - Frontier Booking International - a management agency.
Due to a plagarism allegation, Rod Stewart’s songwriting royalties for the song Do Ya Think I’m Sexy? are donated to the United Nations Children’s Fund.
Here’s another Rod Stewart one. The original recording of “Tonight’s The Night” has Britt Ekland cooing and sighing on the coda. After they broke up, a version of this track was issued on a WB Back-To-Back Hits single minus her contribution (I have this one!). Britt threw a fit, and as a result, her cooing and sighing has been reinstated on every issue of that song, ever since.
OK, this one’s really weak but it’s all I have: the song “Happy Birthday” is not in the public domain- the rights are owned by two little old ladies (sisters), and if it is used on TV, in the movies, or sung in restaurants, they get royalties. Which is why family restaurants always make up their own cheesy birthday songs for the customers.