| U2 – Slow Dancing Lyrics | 17 years ago |
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* Bono wrote this song for Willie Nelson around the same time Johnny Cash recorded the Wanderer. The three of them also lent vocals to a track called, "Give Me Back My Job." That song appears on Go Cat Go! the Carl Perkins tribute album. U2's version of the song appears as a B-Side on the single "Stay Faraway So Close" which was released in 1993. Willie's version appeared as a B-Side in 1996 to the song, "If God Will Send His Angels." Willie has never officially recorded and released the song. |
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| U2 – Who's Gonna Ride Your Wild Horses Lyrics | 17 years ago |
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*Bono wrote the song for the Edge who was going through a divorce at the time. Divorce is frowned upon in Ireland. *The band was never happy with the final mix of the song. They re-recorded the song for the single, calling it the Temple bar mix. The song had a more acoustic feel. This was the version used in the video. The band still feels like they don't play the song very well - like they have never quite captured it live. |
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| Van Halen – Eruption Lyrics | 17 years ago |
| EVH: Three weeks. The album is very live with no overdubs – that's the magic of Ted Templeman. I'd say out of the 10 songs on the record, I overdubbed the solo in two or three songs. One of them's doubled in "Ice Cream Man" and "Jamie's Cryin'." All the rest are live! I used the same equipment I use live, the one guitar, soloed during the rhythm track, and Al just played one set of drums [laughs]. And Mike, you know. And Dave stood in the booth and sang a lot of lead vocals at the same time. The only thing we did overdub was the backing vocals, because you can't play in the same room and sing with the amps – otherwise it will bleed on the mikes. The music, I'd say, took a week, including "Jamie's Cryin'," which we wrote in the studio – I had the basic riffs to the song. And my guitar solo, "Eruption," wasn't really planned to be on the record. Me and Al were dickin' around rehearsing for a show we had to do at the Whiskey, so I was warming up, you know, practicing my solo, and Ted walks in. He goes, "Hey, what's that?" I go, "That's a little solo thing I do live." He goes, "Hey, it's great. Put it on the record." So the music took a week, the singing took about two. | |
| Van Halen – Right Now Lyrics | 17 years ago |
| Just like most Van Halen tunes, this track was written years earlier. Eddie used parts of the music for the soundtrack to the movie, "Wild Life." | |
| Paul McCartney – Figure Of Eight Lyrics | 17 years ago |
| This song opened Paul's Flowers in the Dirt tour. | |
| Paul McCartney – Figure Of Eight Lyrics | 17 years ago |
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Paul's forty-third single. Credited to "Paul McCartney". Here is where Paul really went to town, and I'm sure there was a certain mischievous bit of fun being had by Paul here at the fans expense ! ... a plethora of versions and "remixes" !! "Figure of Eight" had appeared on "Flowers In The Dirt" five months earlier, but that version was the only one NOT to come out on these versions ! ... The initial 7" had a different version of the song (not just remixed) which was over 5 minutes long and re-recorded by Paul on 1st September 1989. The B-side "Ou Est Le Soleil?" was unreleased on vinyl from December 1987 although this released version was marked as mixed by top DJ remixer, Shep Pettibone. The same day a CD single was released, this was an edited version of the A-side, and did NOT carry "Ou Est Le Soliel ?", instead coupling "Loveliest Thing" an unreleased track from June 1987, and the version of "Long And Winding Road" identified on Paul's previous release, "This One". Their were even two versions of this CD released on the same day, one having a gatefold sleeve and numbered CDRS 6235. Also the same day a 12" with the same "Figure Of Eight" A-side, but (bizarrely !), a "Club Lovejoys Mix" of "This One" running to over 6 minutes. This is the cover you can see at the top, above. Next, one week later a 12" with the standard "Figure OF Eight", and the same original 7" mix of "Ou". This was numbered 12 RS 6235. A further week on, and this time a 3" CD release, containing the usual two tracks, but this time adding "Rough Ride", which once again is a different version to that found on the album. And finally one final 12" ... standard "Figure OF Eight", but an even longer Pettibone remix of "Ou" running at over 7 minutes, plus a "Tub Dub" mix of it at 4 and a half minutes (The other 12" pictured above). Paul did produce a video clip for "Ou Est Le Soleil?" on July 14th 1989, but I don't recall there ever being a vid for the A-side. The single was released in a picture sleeve. |
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| Paul McCartney – My Brave Face Lyrics | 17 years ago |
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This was Co-Written by Elvis Costello. Elvis made Paul pull out his Hofner bass for this one, and even though Paul didn't like to record with it (It was hard to keep in tune) he did. Released as a forerunner to "Flowers In The Dirt" which arrived one month later, "My Brave Face" and the B-side "Flying to My Home" are written by Paul and Elvis Costello and were actually recorded back in September 1987. This time the 12", CD, and cassette single all feature the same extra tracks ... "I'm Gonna Be A Wheel Someday" and "Ain't That A Shame" destined for the CHOBA B album. A promo video is shot on 10th and 11th April 1989 at Strawberry Fields in Liverpool, whereby Paul and his backing musicians are filmed in Black and White in a performance shoot. When the video is released, it includes some old home movie clips which Paul purchased at the 1986 Sotheby's auction. There is plenty of great Beatles memorabilia shown, and at one time one can see Elvis in the studio with Paul. At the same time Paul prepared a colour version of the shoot, which is subsequently released as "The Making of My Brave Face". The video's concept: An asian man selling Beatles memorabilia on TV, which he had stolen from Paul's warehouse. (Viewers can see Paul's Sgt. Pepper's outfit). The single was released in a picture sleeve with the photograph taken by Richard Haughton. The 12" has a stiff VERY pink inner sleeve, and the label is the "new" parlophone label. |
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| Paul McCartney – The World Tonight Lyrics | 17 years ago |
| Different B-Sides were issued for this track, and all were issued on CD singles. If you wanted the B-sides here in the states, you had to buy the import CD Singles. This song was issued as the first single from, "Flaming Pie" in the US, while the rest of the world received, "Young Boy." | |
| Paul McCartney – The World Tonight Lyrics | 17 years ago |
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The second song from Paul's initial sessions (there were four in all) with Jeff Lynne took what had been an acoustic, folk-tinged demo and imbued it with a progressively heavier treatment. 'The World Tonight' was written while on holiday in America in 1995 of the 14 songs on Flaming Pie only the title track, 'Somedays' and 'Great Day' were composed in England, for the muse tends to strike Paul most often when he's on holiday. "The lyrics were just gathering thoughts. Like I go back so far, I'm in front of me - I don't know where that came from, but if I'd been writing with John he would have gone "OK, leave that one in; we don't know what it means but we do know what it means." |
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| Paul McCartney – Somedays Lyrics | 17 years ago |
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At first, one session was all it took to commit 'Somedays' on to tape, but Paul felt that it could be enhanced by an arrangement. At this time he was occasionally meeting with George Martin at Abbey Road, sifting through unissued archive Beatles recordings for the Anthology albums (and still nervous, 30 years on, that he would not be the cause of any musical breakdowns...), and Paul asked George if he would listen to 'Somedays' and consider scoring it for an orchestra. "I see you haven't lost your touch!" was the considered response; a 14-piece ensemble overdubbed their contribution on 10 June 1996. " I'd driven Linda to a photo session for one of her cookery assignments. Knowing she'd be about two hours, I set myself a deadline to write a song in that time - so that when she'd finished and would say 'Did you get bored? What did you do?', I could say 'Oh. I wrote this song. Wanna hear it?' " |
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| Paul McCartney – Heaven On A Sunday Lyrics | 17 years ago |
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Paul's son, 19 year old James makes his first guitar appearance on disc. Paul said, 'I played thje acoustic stuff and left the Young Turk to play the hot electric stuff." When proud Dad suggested fomal lessons, James's response, "Well you didn't, Dad", echoed down the decades from 1950s Liverpool. Like father, like son. Or, as Paul puts it, "The saga continues..." "I was out sailing in a small boat; just me, the sail, the wind. Peaceful, Like Heaven on a Sunday. That opening line led me through the song. I thought it's be nice to play with James, my son, so we traded phrases. Lovely to do." |
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| Paul McCartney – Beautiful Night Lyrics | 17 years ago |
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Some scenes had to be cut from the video, here is what the press dais: Paul McCartney agreed to cut scenes containing full frontal nudity from his new video - jokingly dubbed "Hey Nude" - after learning two British TV networks planned to trim the footage if he didn't. The scenes from McCartney's video for his new song Beautiful Night show a man and a woman swimming naked in a river. The former Beatle played bass played bass on the song, which also reunited him with drummer Ringo Starr. "It's so Beatle sounding," |
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| Paul McCartney – Beautiful Night Lyrics | 17 years ago |
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Paul hired a local band by the name of SPUD to be in the video, here is what the press had to say: FIRST THE BEATLES, then Wings - now Spud. London rock band Spud have gone straight to the top of the pops - as Paul McCartney's new band. The 16 year old rockets from Ealing are to make their TV debut on ITVs The Chart Show as the co-stars of the video for Paul's Christmas single, BN. The 4 piece band spent all day filing with Paul and Linda on the Nightingale Estate, Hackney, where the video makers spent much of the time throwing TV sets out of the 20th floor windoes on the tower blocks as part of the action. For other scenes Spud got a double Beatle bonus - when they were filmed playing with Ringo Starr, who drums on the song. The video's director, Julian Temple, make of the Patsy Kensit move Absolute Beginners, hired Spud after spotting the band play at a London Club. "It was wild" said Spud guitarist Gareth Johnson, "we've been gigging around London regularly for the past 6 months and now we'ere playing with Paul and Ringo. Talk about dreams coming true......" |
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| Paul McCartney – Beautiful Night Lyrics | 17 years ago |
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Paul had written this song during the mid eighties. A recording made in New York had been lying on the shelf, unused, since 1986, admired by those who had had heard it but not quite the ideal version as far as Paul was concerned. Working on the Beatles Anthology inpired Paul to collaborate with Ringo Starr again. Much attention around the release is expected to be caused by director Julien Temple's spectacular - and lengthy - video, which includes scenes of actress Emma Moore stripping naked to go skinny dipping in the River Mersey and also sees Paul performing with a new band of 16-year-old London schoolboys whilst being "bombed" by falling TV sets. "I think everyone who makes a record always has that option, to leave the daft stuff on at the end", said Paul, "You nearly always fade it out but at the end of Beautiful Night. It has been such a good take that Ringo started having fun, acting like he was a doorman, throwing people out. I love that so much, it's very Beatley. It's a very Beatley idea to do that, because we did a bit of that in the group. "But Beautiful Night also actually sounds a bit Beatley too. In fact, I swear that at the end of Beautiful Night you can almost hear a sort of very John Lennony voice in there. Listen to it, check it out. "It was a bit eerie listening to that - and I thought 'Wow! It's so Beatley sounding, that. I love it". Paul: "Ringo and I had not worked together for a long time before we did Free As A Bird. Then we did Real Love and it was just such a laugh that I said I was doing a new album and I'd love for him to drum on a couple of tracks. "So I got Beautiful Night together, Ringo came down to my studio and we did it and it was such great fun. It was really good to see that Ringo and I locked in, the Beatles rhythm section, drum and bass, we just locked in. It would have been kindo of disappointing if we'd lost it, but we hadn't. I suppose we'd just played together for so many years with The Beatles that it was still there and really easy to record together". Ringo added: "Paul invited me to play on Beautiful Night and I said 'sure' because it was a beautiful track. We spent the day recording together and I still feel really comfortable playing with his bass-playing - well, playing with him basically, that drums and bass. We have all that history and it all comes into play when we play together. You just can't dismiss that". Although he admits to the influence of the spirit of The Beatles Anthology on many of the songs on Flaming Pie, Paul says he didn't set out to replicate his past. "I didn't consciously start off trying to make a Beatles sound, although these days I don't try to avoid it", said Paul. "There are a lot of other people trying to make that same sound, with great success too. But that's good, it's a turn-on for me. I suppose you could say that when I play it's sort of a Beatles sound anyway. I didn't avoid it or go for it. It just came out that way". George Martin put together the orchestra which appears on the track. The single and video were released in 1998. The album was released in 1997. |
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| Paul McCartney – Beautiful Night Lyrics | 17 years ago |
| Ringo Starr plays drums on this track. The track appears on Paul's, "Flaming Pie" album which was produced by ELO member and former Wilbury, "Jeff Lynne." | |
| Van Halen – Humans Being Lyrics | 17 years ago |
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GW: Were you against the "Twister" soundtrack project? SH: Yes, I was. I thought it was the worst timing in the world. You see, we weren't supposed to work the first half of '96. Eddie was supposed to get his hip surgery done, Al was supposed to get the vertebrae in his neck fixed so that he wouldn't have to wear that neck brace all the time and look like a paraplegic, and I was having a baby with my wife. Everyone knew that. That was the rule, but they changed it. GW: Then why did you agree to work on the "Twister" project? SH: Ray [Danniels] convinced me that "Twister" was going to be one of the biggest movies of the year, and that we needed to do it because the money we'd make off this project would carry us through '96. It would carry us through my wife having our baby, the two months I wanted to spend with them afterwards, up until it was time to start recording the next Van Halen record. I told Ray that if what he was telling me was the truth, then I'd sacrifice and work on the project. He completely conned me. When I found out about the shuffling of songs on this project, I blew my lid. GW: Van Halen's contribution to the Twister soundtrack was a rocker and an instrumental. Wasn't that the original plan? SH: The rocker was, but not the instrumental. I had written lyrics to a song called "The Silent Extreme," which Alex later renamed "Humans Being," and Eddie and I were working on a ballad,"Between Us Two," with Bruce Fairbairn. Those were the two songs I thought were going to be on the soundtrack. Bruce didn't care for the rock tune that much, but he absolutely loved the ballad. So, we record the two songs. Bruce says they're done, and I tell them I'm flying back to Maui because I didn't like leaving my wife alone so far along in her pregnancy. As I'm leaving, Eddie goes, "No, no, no. You can't leave yet. They aren't going to use the ballad in the movie now!" GW: Eddie maintains that Alex asked you specifically not to write any lyrics that involved twisters, yet you went ahead and did it anyway. Is this true? SH: I have no idea what they're talking about. In our first meeting about the soundtrack, Ed and Al told me they didn't want the song to be about Twisters, and I said fine no problem. Ray Danniels came up to me and said he didn't want a song about Twisters. Again I said fine, no problem. All I wanted to do was see some footage of the film so I could at least make some of the lyrics fit the action on the screen. Since Eddie and Alex saw the movie to make their music fit, I thought I'd better do the same thing to get a vibe or the lyrics. I asked the film's director, Jan De Bont, to send me some footage and he did. From what I saw on the screen, I thought the movie was about the infatuation people have with fear and how it can suck you in. Sometimes you're afraid to fall in love with a chick, but she sucks you in anyway. You know that if you start messing with this girl, you'll become infatuated with the danger that she represents. So "The Silent Extreme" was a song that talked about being right in the middle of all this, and I wrote this really cool lyric I thought said it all. GW: "Sky turning black/knuckles turning white/headed for the hot zone"? SH: Headed for the "suck zone." That lyric had nothing to do with tornadoes. Again, I have no idea where Eddie came up with the idea that that was tornado stuff. The only word in that phrase that even comes close to sounding like a twister is "sky turning black." But that line can mean anything, you know. The rest of the song had absolutely nothing to do with tornadoes. It was all about entering the silent extreme. GW: Did you talk to Jan De Bont about your ideas regarding the lyrical content of the song? SH: Jan and Bud Carr, the executive producer of the soundtrack, called me in Maui and we talked about the song. Jan told me that he had this folder in his possession that belonged to the guy who wrote the screenplay for the movie. He said the folder contained some 300 pages of technical weather terms that tornado chasers use, like "suck zone," "the bear is coming through" and "there's a dry line down here." He told me that if I wanted it, he'd send it to me. Now, I thought "suck zone" was a bad-ass term, a very teenage trip kind of thing. Jan and Bud totally got off on the idea, and they said that if I could use words like that in the song without writing about a Twister, that would be great. I told them I'd do absolutely that. Jan then sent me the folder the screenwriter used; I still have it at my house today. But when Al and Ed saw the words I'd written, they just freaked out. GW: Eddie says that because you refused to fly in from Maui to the studio, you put the band in a tight spot as far as a deadline went for the song, so he had to come up with a title for it, "Human Being," and a melody. SH: Alex came up with that title. He had discussed it with me during the Balance tour because he thought it would be a cool theme to build a song around. Yes, they did come up with the melody. The reason I didn't fly over from Maui at their beck and call is my wife was about to have a baby at any time. Those guys knew that. But you know what, I still ended up flying back and forth three times to work with them. These guys wanted me to come back and forth so much, I finally ended up packing my bags and moving back to my home in San Francisco to have the baby, directly against the plans my wife and I had. These guys would not compromise and meet me halfway. GW: When you did show up to work on the now re-christened "Humans Being," did you, Bruce and Eddie sit down together to finish the lyrics? SH: Bruce and I wrote the lyrics, period. When they told me that the ballad wasn't going to be used for the soundtrack, and that they needed an additional minute and a half for the rocker, I headed out of the studio. I had to catch a plane in two hours to be with my wife. I didn't care anymore because I felt I'd been tricked all the way around. Eddie pleaded with me and said all they needed was just a minute and a half of music from me, and then I could go. He wanted me to chant something like, "Bah, bah, bah. I hate this, I hate that, you dirty rat." I looked at Eddie and told him that sucked. He just said, "Well, do something. All they need is a minute and a half; otherwise we'll just make an instrumental out of it." Bruce told me that all we needed was 16 words, two verses,and the song would be complete. I said okay, and came up with this line: "There is just enough Christ in me/To make me feel almost guilty/Is that why God made us bleed/To make us see we're humans being." I wrote those verses in about 10-15 minutes on the hood of a car with Bruce. It was so cheeseball the way it was done. We wrote the lyrics, I sang the song in three parts in about an hour and a half and split. GW: Eddie says that the tension was so thick between you two that he warned Bruce Fairbairn not to tell you that he'd come up with a song title and a melody to the record. Also, that whenever he suggested anything to you, you just stopped listening. SH: I want to set the record straight. Everything that Eddie has said about me is the total opposite of what really happened. Eddie says I wouldn't listen to him, but he just never listened to me. Eddie says I wanted to be a solo artist. No, Eddie wanted to be a solo artist. Bruce Fairbairn pulled me to the side once and said, "Sammy, I don't know what's wrong with Eddie. I don't care if you wrote "Stairway To Heaven," right now Eddie wouldn't want to record it because it's something that you want to do. For some reason, this guy's has it in for you." Now, this is Bruce Fairbairn saying this to me. He felt so sorry for me and the situation I was in, he wouldn't even let Eddie into the same room with me when I was singing. He couldn't get anything done with Eddie hanging around the control room because he was interfering so much. If I would go up on a high note, Eddie would want a low one. That's how petty the situation had become. |
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| Van Halen – Humans Being Lyrics | 17 years ago |
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"We needed time off from each other after our last tour," explains Hagar, "because there was a lot of personal stuff we had to take care of. Eddie needed hip replacement surgery. Al needed his back worked on. And I was going to have a baby. We had just finished the most extensive tour Van Halen had ever undertaken, performing 138 shows across three continents during an eight-month period of time. We needed to regroup and retool ourselves before we hooked up again for a new album. "It didn't happen. Instead, a string of broken promises ensued that saw Eddie and Alex going straight into the studio to work on music for a film soundtrack, and I was conned into working on it while I juggled my schedule to be with my wife, who was about to give birth to our first child. The situation turned into a nightmare." Instead of entering hospitals, Van Halen entered the studio to work on two new songs their management committed them to write for the motion picture Twister. And once that project got underway, talk of a an Halen best of package suddenly began gathering steam. Hagar, already on edge because of the band's commitment toTwister, was driven to take a stand by the serious talk about a greatest hits package. "Our manager, Ray Danniels, had promised me that after we finished the Twister project, that was it," insists Hagar. "I told him point blank that we needed a break from each other, that the brothers were supposed to takecare of their physical ailments, that my wife was pregnant. We were all at wits' end. Eddie was walking aroundwith a cane on painkillers because his hip hurt so badly; Alex had a neck brace on. He has to see a chiropractor on a weekly basis, and a massage therapist comes over to his house every day to rub down his head and neck just so he can get out of bed." A corrosive combination of the tensions and, says Hagar, deceit surrounding Twister and the Best Of package began weaving its way into the very fabric that held Van Halen together, slowly fraying their relationship to thepoint where Hagar would be forced to make a series of professional decisions he thought he'd never have to face. On June 27, 1996, he issued a press release announcing his decision to step down as the frontman of one of the most enduring and popular rock and roll bands in the world. |
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| Paul McCartney – Put It There Lyrics | 17 years ago |
| Paul sang the ending to, "HELLO GOODBYE" when he performed this song during his, "Flowers in the Dirt" World Tour. The live version can be heard on , "Tripping the Live Fantastic." | |
| Paul McCartney – Put It There Lyrics | 17 years ago |
| PAUL MCCARTNEY - Yeah it’s something my father used to say to me. Put it there if it weighs a ton. Here’s lookin’ at you kid… One of those.” | |
| Paul McCartney – This One Lyrics | 17 years ago |
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PAUL McCARTNEY - When you get those moments sort of late at night, or when you’re feeling sort of good, or I don’t know.. You think oh.. you know.. you think it’d be great… I hope I tell her I love her enough, and we do all that.. And then you kind of come the morning you’ve got to get off to the office, “Ok, goodbye.. MMM love you.” You know life’s like that. And there’s never enough time to.. if you’re like your parents for instance to tell them just what you meant to me. You always think, well I’m saving it up, I’ll tell them one day. And what happens with a lot of people with John for instance, getting back to that subject… He died…. Um.. I was lucky, for the last few months he was alive, we managed to get our relationship back on we were talking, we were having really nice conversations, real nice and friendly… George actually.. um.. didn’t – I don’t think, get his relationship right.. I think they were arguing right up till the end, which I think is a great source of sadness to him.. And I’m sure in the feeling of this song, that George was always planning to tell John he loved him, but time ran out. So that’s what the song is about. There could never be a better moment than this one. Now. Take this moment to say, I love you.. |
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| Pearl Jam – Soon Forget Lyrics | 17 years ago |
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"It's a beautiful little song, sentimental and fun at the same time," Gossard said. "I think it was something that everyone in the band immediately responded to. As soon as we heard him play it, we were like, 'Oh, that's gotta go on the record.' I think Ed was just joking around." The binaural microphone is what gives the song "Soon Forget" its razor-sharp presence. Vedder, who wrote the song, accompanies himself on ukelele on the tender, humorous track. Jeff A: Well, in the recording process, when we were working with Tchad Blake, the producer, one of the techniques that he likes to use is a binaural head - which is a foam facsimile of a human head that has a microphone in each, the left and right, ear. So, supposedly its picking up music the way that a human would pick up music. And he would do all sorts of crazy stuff, like put giant plastic PVC tubes, pipes, over the ears to make it like a tunnel effect. I think the song that you can really hear it on is Soon Forget, which is just the ukulele song at the end that Ed sings. I think it's all binaural head. He's singing through a PA in the room, and you can really hear just the stereo effect of it. "Ed and Chris Cornell had talked about how hard it is to write a sad song on ukulele, so Ed took that as a challenge." (interview - Boston Globe - 5/14/00) MIKE |
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| Pearl Jam – Rival Lyrics | 17 years ago |
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"Rivals" (which opens with the growling of Blake's dog, Dakota) is a vengeful, ominous song that begins with the words, "All my rivals will see what I have in store." "I just came up with the riff and we played with that for a while," Gossard said. "I kind of saw it as a cartoon exploration of competition and paranoia and people's perspective on who's out to get them. I thought of relating that to how nations deal with each other and sort of push each other around. "And then while we were working on the album the whole Columbine High School tragedy happened and it started reflecting some of that stuff, too. So it just kind of has a weird mishmash of influences." “Supposed to be what the Columbine Killers were thinking the night before.” (Talking about the Binaural Head Mic) And the dog too, the dog barking right before Rival. It sounds like it's being panned back and forth really hardcore, that's just Tchad. He has a hold of the head, and he's shaking the head in front of his dog. Jeff O: That was Tchad's dog? Jeff A: Yeah. Jeff O: What's the dog's name? Jeff A: Dakota. Jeff O: Dakota. Dakota got a credit actually. Jeff A: Yeah, he did. |
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| Pearl Jam – Grievance Lyrics | 17 years ago |
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Vedder says those lines, which he wrote, are not about the band. Rather, they're about governmental and corporate manipulation of the consumer. "I was talking about interest rates," he deadpans, letting out a throaty laugh. The Dow Jones and NASDAQ had crashed just days before. I decided to hold off on questioning the "champagne breakfast for everyone" line from "Grievance" as a comment on Pearl Jam's lavish rock-star lifestyle. ---You still use a typewriter instead of a computer to write your lyrics and from what you say, it seems as if you're vehemently anti-technology.... On the last track of the album one can hear you frustratingly hacking away on your typewriter. Rumor has it that you were suffering from a severe writer's block.... |
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| Pearl Jam – Of the Girl Lyrics | 17 years ago |
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Mike: Yeah, well I enjoyed that song. It kind of had a…thank you very much…it had kind of a Stonesy vibe to it too, Mick Taylor being one of my favourite guitar players around too, and I like Clapton a lot too. I think that song lent itself to playing that way, and hopefully I achieved that. We recorded it in kind of the analog sense. We actually opened up with it last night, and it's kind of a cool way to open up a show, I found. Yeah, those guys are my guitar heroes, and that kind of sound. I wanted to, when I heard Stone play it for the first time, it was like, yeah, I could just do something like that over it. And it came out pretty cool, I think. Eddie: It's a type of recording that's called binaural recording. There's several ways to do it, whether there's two microphones clipped here [motions to both temples by ear], to not just record the instruments, but record the air around the instruments. You can hear, there's a song called Of The Girl. You know you can hear Mike's, Mike McCready's guitar. You can really feel the space of the room. That is something that you kind of miss from modern recordings, which may be done on pro tools or computer or... It's just a micing technique but I think we were successful capturing some of the moods that happened in the room by adding some of that room sound. Worldbeat Interview on CNN, broadcast June 11, 2000; London, England |
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| Pearl Jam – Insignificance Lyrics | 17 years ago |
| EDDIE VEDDER: "Insignificance." In the global scope of what it all means, we're really just passing through", Vedder says, philosophically. "I feel very insignificant---and I like that. It's pretty grounding. I mean, if I see a good pile of ants going---say they're trying to carry the corpse of a wasp out of a screen door---I'll take an hour and watch how they work. They're all working for one purpose. I feel like one of those little guys. It's like "Okay, at least I know what I'm doing here, and it's nothing too important". That's very calming. And you try to do a little bit of good within that. I'm happy trying to communicate as a small human with a fragile heart", he laughs, "and a questionable brain". | |
| Pearl Jam – Thin Air Lyrics | 17 years ago |
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Gossard: I think the stronger your connection with someone, the more chances you can really hurt them. I think that's the key to that. You put yourself into a situation where something really means something to you, and if you lose that situation, it can really be painful. Vedder: I appreciated the fact that it was a song about new love. I couldn't have written that song. Because my love is actually really very, very old. It's on a whole other spectrum. Sonicnet: Because you've known [wife] Beth [Liebling] since high school? Vedder: Seventeen years. So, to hear this one, and know that that stuff is true ... I responded to the apprehension that was in there. I thought it was beautiful. Vedder: I might ask them a little bit. My only question to Stone on "Thin Air" is, "Do you want to sing it?" Gossard: Every night? No. Vedder: Actually, when he said yes, I was pretty happy. I turned around and said, "Yeah! Great!" Gossard: You don't know what it's like to be in a band with a singer that's open to looking at somebody else's songs and saying there's value in that. That's what gives life to this band, and what will sustain it, the idea that if everybody just writes two to three good songs a year. And usually it's the ones you don't even think that anyone will respond to that everyone responds to. You come in with your A-list, and you think, "I got this one surefire." But, by the end of the day, everyone is like, "You know that one on the second side? That kinda weird one? That's the one we should do." That's great. That's such a great process — to be in a collaboration where people are pulling stuff, and responding to your music in a way that you don't expect. EV: Actually, that was one of my favorite ones during the beginning of the recording process, which made me want to write 2 or 3 ones that were better. Yeah! It's a good song. |
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| Pearl Jam – Nothing as It Seems Lyrics | 17 years ago |
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1st Single From Binaural- B-Sides include: 2. insignificance “Said to be about Aments childhood.” "It actually felt like we were offering them something fairly challenging," Vedder, 35, said of the midtempo track with lyrics and music by bassist Jeff Ament "We talked about four other songs, and all of a sudden someone said, 'What about "Nothing As It Seems?"' We all went, 'All right, that'll work; let's do that,' " Gossard said, pausing to tap Vedder on the shoulder to bum an American Spirit cigarette. "We agreed on it, and we all dug in our heels and said, 'That's what you're going to get.' " "That one, we felt like we could [release] and we weren't trying to fool people," Vedder added with a crooked grin. We're not trying to put people off deliberately. It's not as if we want to stop them from buying our albums. You know as well as I do that it doesn't work. You can't stop them from buying albums, just as you can't make the audience buy albums. But we don't want to lead them on. For example, if we'd have a song with some earworm quality and great hook lines as a single, a lot of people would think the album is like the single and they'd be disappointed. OK, a lot of people would like that, especially the record companies wouldn't mind if we'd sell more albums this way. But for us, it just wouldn't be right. It's not the way we do it. It's not Pearl Jam. EV Vedder: Those are interesting conversations. Because after you make the record and you're ready to display it publicly, and then the first single comes out before the record, then it becomes a strange conversation. ... There's a bit of manipulation going on there, what you would like people to hear. At that point, you try to do it for a few minutes, there's a few back-and-forths. ... To me it starts getting a bit ridiculous. It seems like, in a way, you're trying to fool people. The record company would like the absolute singalong, the immediate melody. "It was just a little ditty on a demo that I kind of played some hand drums on, and had this little song. Actually, I spent quite a bit of time with the lyrics, and I think Stone initially said, 'Let's try that one.' There were little sections of the song [where] I definitely heard Mike doing his thing, so I kinda said, 'Hey, man, you need to write a theme for these little sections.' It's pretty cool to see a little song that I wrote being played by everyone. I mean, I can almost kind of stand back and just watch this great band play a song," he added, "and take it to a completely different level. Mike and Ed, they have that ability where they can really raise the level of anything that they play." (interview - MTV.com - 4/28/00) JEFF "For me, it's a song about judgment and not always understanding what is going on with another person." (interview - Boston Globe - 5/14/00) JEFF |
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| Pearl Jam – Light Years Lyrics | 17 years ago |
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"We try to do that as a band, take the less traveled route," he continues. "With 'Light Years,' Mike McCready had written some music. We were excited about it for a while, but when we got down to recording it, it was too nice, too right there - it was a little too close to 'Given to Fly.' We changed the tempos, and then one night Mike and I, after working on it all day and getting frustrated, just flipped it backwards, and in about 35 minutes it became 'Light Years,' with words and everything. It still has a fairly contagious chorus and melody, but it's just sideways enough to make me happy." ____________ DJ: What else do you like? You name a song. By the way, "Light Years" lyrically is one of the most amazing songs I've heard. EV: What are you getting from it there? DJ: Obviously it's about something deeply personal and obviously the song is written about an amazing person who really affected your life. I mean, do you want to talk about that at all or what? EV: No, you just said it all. That's great. ____________ “The song was written for a friend of Eddies who had recently passed away.” |
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| Pearl Jam – Evacuation Lyrics | 17 years ago |
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Former Soundgarden drummer Matt Cameron, who joined Pearl Jam for its 1998 U.S. tour and has been a part of the band ever since, is also a dominant factor on "Binaural." Cameron wrote the music for the edgy "Evacuation" and is said to have come up with certain guitar parts that Gossard and guitarist Mike McCready spent hours figuring out. Vedder: Matt wrote it, and there's a lot of momentum in it. I couldn't sit down and write to it, so that was when I'd take it in the car and just go for drives — the open road thing. So it felt like I was evacuating. The theory behind the song, which I've probably done four times already, is getting out of a situation. "Rearviewmirror" might be the same song. But it's time to make a change — it's a song about change. |
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| Pearl Jam – Red Mosquito Lyrics | 17 years ago |
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Jeff Ament didn't help matters either, telling the audience unsympathetically, "We'll try to come back at the end of the tour but, you know, oh well." Neil Young stood on the side of the stage and looked hurt. After Ament's speech, he broke into "Rocking in the Free World" for the second time that day, as if twice playing the only song most people in the crowd knew would make everyone feel better. It didn't. Two days later, physically and emotionally drained, they canceled the remainder of the tour. "I think we all agreed that it had gotten insane, that it was no longer about the music," says Vedder. ''It sounds like it's not a big deal,'' he says. ''But I thought I was going to die. We've been in some pretty tense situations as far as crowd control, and usually I pull it off. I think they just thought I was going to pull it off. |
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| Pearl Jam – Red Mosquito Lyrics | 17 years ago |
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"Ed took ill when the band was touring for Vitalogy, And Ed was so sick he thought he was going to die. The band had to cancel a few shows, and Ed had to stay in bed." Concert Review: Pearl Jam @ Golden Gate Park, San Francisco, CA 6/24/95 Pearl Jam took the stage around 2:00 in the afternoon, and Eddie Vedder seemed shaky, messing up "Corduroy" and plowing through several other numbers (including "Go," "Animal" and "Not For You") in a sort of strangled croak. After saying "I want to tell you something from my heart," Vedder informed the crowd that he had the flu or maybe food poisoning and that he'd had to be taken to the emergency room at 3:30 that morning. He then went into more detail about his various bodily functions--vomiting, etc--than anyone needed to know. After promising to try to come back later in the show, and telling the crowd, "Lucky for you, Neil Young is here," he left the stage. Young came out about twenty minutes later, backed by the other members of Pearl Jam. They played an extended set, performing everything from "Hey Hey, My My" and "Powderfinger" to newer material from the Young/Pearl Jam collaboration, "Mirror Ball." Young was wonderful, and the crowd of 53,000 was polite. Only scattered boos had greeted Vedder's announcement anyway, and everyone sat quietly through Young's set. Everybody figured that Vedder would eventually come back, an assumption based at least partly on Young's frequent teasing. "Let's go see if we can wake up Eddie." "Maybe Eddie's feeling better now." At one point, Young even said, "I saw Eddie lying backstage on his face. He didn't look so good." According to later news reports, at that point Vedder wasn't even at Golden Gate Park, but had gone back to his hotel. So why keep hinting that he would return? Anyone lying in a pool of their own vomit, as Vedder ostensibly was, is probably not going to come back for an encore. But it took two and a half hours before Young told the crowd what he must have always known, that Vedder wasn't going to return. |
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| Pearl Jam – Habit Lyrics | 17 years ago |
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McCready: Eddie and I have been kind of distanced from each other over the past couple of years because of my condition. I didn’t have a lot of confidence. I was literally afraid of everybody. I didn’t know how to realte to Eddie., and after the band took off, I went off in my own little world. Coming back to that, getting clean, I said to Eddie ,”Listen man, I know I’ve been fucked up for a long time, but I want to get back and re-establish our relationship that we had in the beginning. SG: I'm a moderate smoker. I've certainly smoked it every day for certain periods in my life. Once a day. Wake up and play music for a couple hours. I've abused it at times. But in general I'd say I enjoy it in moderation. That's a totally different state of mind and a different way to accomplish things and a different way to live your life. (Stones’s interview with High Times, a PRO Pot magazine) SG: There's certainly good pot in Seattle. SG: Not everybody in the band smokes pot. "I wish it was luck to which I could attribute getting through some of those periods," says Eddie, slowly. "Some of that stuff I understand, and some I don't. Life is..." (Eddie ruminates) "I hate to say that I can relate to the needle, that I could condone it. I can't condone it, because it becomes a little harder to understand when you have someone who could follow much more positive paths to get through; like drink juice or do yoga. They actually have the options to create any life that they want. And they can even quit, and never play music again or play music in their homes for themselves or for their friends. Learn to basket weave..." (Long, long pause) "...underwater, or anything, and then it becomes harder to understand why people choose the paths they do. It's hard to have sympathy. "I have to admit, Kurt was the exception, because I did feel sympathetic to his situation, because it was a little more intense than the other two. But I think there was more to that a than meets the eye in that situation, and I'm not going to refer any more to it. But I just don't relate that much to those things, and I feel it's inherently dishonest. "You know, it's weird to meet someone and to have a conversation with them and to find out afterwards that they weren't even... there or something. It makes you feel like you've been lied to." |
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| Pearl Jam – Who You Are Lyrics | 17 years ago |
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1st Single From No Code: B-sides include: 1. Habit Irons is more than just a calming influence; his complicated beats set the rhythmic tone of No Code, from the moody drum circles of "In My Tree" to the Eastern swirl of "Who You Are." "We realized that we had an opportunity to experiment," says Vedder of recording with Irons. "For instance, everyone has written that `Who Are You' was obviously inspired by my collaboration with Nusrat, but that's not where it came from." "I'd been playing that [drum pattern] since I was eight," says Irons. "It was inspired by a Max Roach drum solo I heard at a drum shop when I was a little kid." "When I first heard that song, I was totally blown away by it," raves McCready. "I thought it was the best song we had ever done." But is it a single? "Who You Are" was the band's handpicked choice for the first radio track from No Code, an obviously difficult song that garnered little enthusiasm at radio and set the table for No Code's subpar commercial performance. Vedder admits that the band's selection of "Who You Are" was a "conscious decision" made partly to keep the size of their audience, and hence their lives, manageable, and that's consistent with the album's musical experiments. Rolling Stone Magazine has written an investigative piece entitled "Inventing Eddie Vedder, Pearl Jam's Mystery Man," and in it the magazine claims Vedder is actually nothing like the image he has cultivated. Interviews with dozens of friends and associates yield a picture of Vedder that is quite at odds with his public persona of shy and reserved rock star who has had a difficult time dealing with the pressures of being a celebrity. "He's a master manipulator of people and situations around him," a source at Epic Records, the band's label, tells the mag, calling Vedder "a master manipulator of his own image." Rolling Stone purports that Vedder was not the unpopular high school student many believed him to be, but was instead quite popular and outgoing, and was voted Most Talented after showing off his acting skills in a number of school plays. Vedder went on to front a local band and learned everything he could about the music business. But when he moved to Seattle in 1990 and Pearl Jam was formed, he acted as though he was "naive about the industry," says an Epic staffer. As the band exploded into one of the hottest acts of the nineties, Vedder became more reclusive, often appearing in masks to avoid having his picture taken. When Pearl Jam won the Grammy for Best Hard Rock Performance this year, he surprised many by saying the award "doesn't mean anything." "If you'd known him ten years ago, you just wouldn't believe he'd ever say anything like that" says a San Diego club owner. "Back in the old days, Eddie was grateful for everything and anything." While there has been no official response from Vedder or Pearl Jam about the article, Vedder did address the issue onstage at a show in New York in late September: "I know who I really am," he announced in the middle of the song "Who You Are." "It's a long story, and it won't fit . . . in a Rolling Stone." |
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| Pearl Jam – Sometimes Lyrics | 17 years ago |
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So, I ask Vedder, seeing that you're hobnobbing with rock stars, not to mention basketball divas, are we really supposed to buy that bit about you being "a book amongst the many on a shelf"? "You know, you people have given me so much shit for that line. Like, 'yeah, fucking right, you're that guy.' But you know what?" Vedder looks me straight in the eye. "I am that guy." Then he motions around the room. "We are that guy." |
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| Van Halen – Don't Tell Me (What Love Can Do) Lyrics | 17 years ago |
| Alex Van Halen: Balance is a slice of our life. We hope it does to you what it did to us when we listened back to the record. I think one of the criteria whether (or not) you think it's a good record is 'Are you still moved by it?' Balance does it for me. My favorite song on the record is 'Don't Tell Me.' You crank it up in the fucking car and you can't help but start to drive faster. It moves me and I still don't know all the lyrics. | |
| Van Halen – Don't Tell Me (What Love Can Do) Lyrics | 17 years ago |
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Alex Van Halen: The (songs are) actually written in two pieces; first the music by itself. If it holds up as a song, then you have a damn good basis to put lyrics over. Sammy walks in, and 9 times out of 10 - if not 99 out of 100 - his first reaction to it, what comes out of his mouth as he kind of scat sings along with it, generally ends up being the song. With this record, we spent a little more time asking Sammy to re-write stuff. Like, 'Don't Tell Me (What Love Can Do)' was originally 'What Love Can Do.' The whole slant of the song was one of universal love - that it can cure all and fix all, and the planet will be all right. Well, you hear so many people talking about it. I don't wanna hear it. Show me. I'm sick and tired of people telling me this shit. Then again, that's not the focus of the record, it's just one song. In it, we're saying 'Don't tell me this shit,' but (sequenced) right before this is a song called 'Can't Stop Loving You'. |
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| Van Halen – Panama Lyrics | 17 years ago |
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Panama is actually the name of Dave's Car.. It's not about a stripper, or some drag race he saw... He had the hood and bumper mounted in his hallway.. You can see the bumper/hood if you watch his video for SHOOBop over on Youtube. He has a stuffed deer's ass crashing through the front windshield. A plaque underneath that reads - Your First deer, courtesy of PANAMA. DLR : "You heard me talking about my Opal Cadet 1969 Station wagon in Dance the Night Away. The nickname for that blue 1969 Opal cadet station wagon was, "Panama" cuz that was the farthest South that you could possibly go and still have a really corrupt good time. That car now, what I did is I had a friend of mine torch off the front engine lid, and at my house in Pasadena, California we have it bolted to the wall in the front hallway. You have the front engine compartment in the grill and the two front halves of wheels like that, and we mounted the windshield right up on the top of it okay? Like it came crashing through the wall of the hallway. And then what we did, is we went to a place called Ellis Mercantile which is where you rent all of the movie props that they make in Hollywood and all of these environments. There's a section that's very famous at Ellis Mercantile where all of the Cowboys and Indians stuff is. So there's a whole stack of stuffed deer at Ellis Mercantile. And I bought one, and we sawed it neatly in half and took just the butt, the tail and the back legs and positioned it like it was coming through the windshield of my Opal Cadet station wagon, and hit it and ran through the wall of my house like that. And we painted the hooves blue, "Blue Suede Hooves." And underneath we have a little plaque that says, "My first deer, courtesy of Panama." |
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