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The Songfactor's Choice Top Ten Facts


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  • 2 weeks later...

The Songfactor's Choice Top Ten #155

THREE songs without facts:

I Just Don't Know What to do With Myself - Dusty Springfield (1964)

My Friends - Red Hot Chili Peppers (1995)

We've Got Tonight - Bob Seger (1978)

If you have any info on any of the songs mentioned anywhere in this thread, please feel free to post your knowledge here. Submissions on songs will be collated and sent to the main site and you will receive credit for your contribution.

The Songfish thanks you.

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Wow, an RHCP song doesn't have Songfacts?

If anyone has their greatest hits DVD within easy reach (i.e. not on another continent) they can confirm this... which is what I remember from it:

My Friends had two videos. The first was directed by Anton Corbijn and featured the band on a boat with several surreal themes. The Chilis weren't pleased with the final product and so they shot another video, this time with Gavin Bowden. The second video was much more straightforward with shots of the band playing in a studio surrounded by candles. The candles in the video were the only source of light for the whole shoot.

That's about all I remember.

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The Songfactor's Choice Top Ten #156

THREE songs again this week:

Don't Let It Bring You Down - Neil Young (1971)

Most Beautiful Girl, The - Charlie Rich (1973)

Still... You Turn Me On - Emerson, Lake & Palmer (1973)

If you have any info on any of the songs mentioned anywhere in this thread, please feel free to post your knowledge here. Submissions on songs will be collated and sent to the main site and you will receive credit for your contribution.

The Songfish thanks you.

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"We've Got Tonight"

Bob Seger

Written by Bob Seger. A track of his 1978 album "Stranger In Town" and a single, with "Ain´t Got No Money" as the B-side.

A classic of adult contemporary rock.

Recorded by Bob Seger and the Silver Bullet Band. It reached #13 in the American charts and became a huge hit.

In 1983, Kenny Rogers and Sheena Easton covered this song and it went to the Top of almost every chart in the US. It also charted higher in the UK than Seger´s version.

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"Don´t Let It Bring You Down"

Neil Young

Written by Neil Young. A track of his 1970 album "After The Gold Rush" and also part of "4 Way Street", by Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young.

Line-up for the album:

Neil Young – guitar, piano, harmonica, vibes, vocals

Danny Whitten – guitar, vocals

Jack Nitzsche – piano

Billy Talbot – bass

Ralph Molina – drums, vocals

Greg Reeves – bass

Nils Lofgren – piano, vocals

Stephen Stills – vocals

From allmusic:

Neil Young sounds grave, though consoling, on this soulful folk-rock song from After the Gold Rush (1970). Though only the second album with his legendary backing group Crazy Horse, Young and the band have already hit on the sounds that were almost as instrumental as his songwriting was to forging Young's reputation. Though they certainly trod their "ragged glory" garage band sound on the album, "Don't Let It Bring You Down" falls to the largely acoustic side of the spectrum for which the band was also well-known. The country-soul piano/acoustic guitar, kick/snare drum groove is a Young archetype — easily identifiable upon the first measure. "Old man lying by the side of the road/As the lorries pass me by," sings Young, but even without the lyrics, the stark, driving music already evokes rain-slicked highways and wheels in motion. "Full moon sinking from the weight of the load/And the buildings scrape the sky/Cold wind ripping down the alley at dawn/And the morning paper flies/Dead man lying by the side of the road/With the daylight in his eyes." Young seems to be using images of urban decay and pre- Tom Waits, Bob Dylan-like skid-row scenes to illustrate some sort of spiritual bankruptcy, and the ponderous weight of such dispiriting circumstances appears to be affecting someone with a less-thick skin than the narrator's own. "Don't let it bring you down," he advises on the chorus. "It's only castles burning/Find someone who's turning/And you will come around." Like Dylan, the images are charged with an almost biblical significance, or at least aspire to such: "Blind man walking by the river at night/With an answer in his hand/Come on down to the river of sight/Where you can really understand." Young's voice climbs to a higher register, from his already naturally high style to something approaching a falsetto on the chorus variation, which serves as a sort-of middle-eight bridge and ending. The band stops to allow the singer to take the lines accompanied only by his acoustic guitar and Nils Lofgren's piano. The lyrics and vocal style of "Don't Let It Bring You Down" are exemplary of Young's influence on countless bands, singers, and songwriters — particularly those of so-called alternative rock — well into the late '90s and beyond. For interesting slants on the song, there is Annie Lenox's version, which appears both on her Medusa (1995) album and in the film American Beauty (1999), where the lyrics were put into the context of suburban alienation. On Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young's Four Way Street (1971), Young pithily introduces the song as, "a new song that is guaranteed to bring you right down. It's called "Don't Let It Bring You Down." It sorta starts off real slow then fizzles out altogether." Young's solo, open-tuned acoustic guitar resonates and fills up the hall.

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"I Just Don't Know What to do With Myself"

Dusty Springfield

Written by Burt Bacharach/Hal David.

Dusty Springfield recorded the second version in 1964 -sideB: "My Colouring Book"- and it reached #3 in the UK charts.

The first recording was in 1962 by Tommy Hunt. It was produced by Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller, and arranged and conducted by Burt Bacharach.

The White Stripes recorded a version of the song in 2003 -released as a single and included in their album "Elephants"- and the black and white video, featuring Kate Moss, was directed by Sofia Coppola.

Allmusic said about the song:

Opening with a deceiving Floyd Cramer-style country piano lick, this song quickly slips into a soulful pop groove. Another fine example of the obvious sense of elegance that the Bacharach/ David songwriting team was after, "I Just Don't Know What to Do With Myself" illustrates a clear psychological dilemma — one that these songwriters were experts at. The original Tommy Hunt version never even cracked the Top 100, but the song was recognized by several other excellent Bacharach/ David interpreters such as Dusty Springfield, Dionne Warwick, and even Elvis Costello and Smokey Robinson (singers who definitely didn't need to cover songs by other writers). All did exquisite versions
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Wow, an RHCP song doesn't have Songfacts?

If anyone has their greatest hits DVD within easy reach (i.e. not on another continent) they can confirm this... which is what I remember from it:

My Friends had two videos. The first was directed by Anton Corbijn and featured the band on a boat with several surreal themes. The Chilis weren't pleased with the final product and so they shot another video, this time with Gavin Bowden. The second video was much more straightforward with shots of the band playing in a studio surrounded by candles. The candles in the video were the only source of light for the whole shoot.

That's about all I remember.

"My Friends"

Red Hot Chili Peppers

Written by Kiedis/Flea/Navarro/Smith. Released in September 1995 as a single and also a track of their album "One Hot Minute".

Wikipedia says:

It is a melodic ballad and was released as the second single from the album. ...It became the band's third #1 single on the Modern Rock Tracks chart, and their first #1 single on the Mainstream Rock Tracks chart. Lyrically, "My Friends" is one of the more moodier and introspective songs on the album, exploring the loneliness and emptiness people feel. Singer Anthony Kiedis then stresses that those people "hurt by the cold" are not alone and are loved. The song is about the difficult times Flea went through; he was going through a painful divorce of his first wife and felt even more depressed because the writing and recording of One Hot Minute was a painstakingly slow and disappointing process that took almost a year and a half.

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Still... You Turn Me On - Emerson, Lake & Palmer

From Wiki:

Still... You Turn Me On - Emerson, Lake & Palmer (1973), is off their fourth studio album Brain Salad Surgery. It was produced By Greg Lake.

In support of the album, ELP embarked on a world tour (their largest to date), titled the Someone Get Me A Ladder tour (the name is borrowed from a Still... You Turn Me On lyric). A live album of the tour, Welcome Back My Friends to the Show That Never Ends (also named for a Karn Evil 9 lyric) was released in 1974.

Source: Brain Salad Surgery Website

Still .... You Turn Me On was one of Greg's acoustic ballads in the tradition of 'Lucky Man' and 'From The Beginning'. Ironically, it was these ballads that were played the most on the radio, and made ELP popular. Still .... You Turn Me On was an obvious single choice, but the band nixed it's release, both because Carl didn't play on the track and because the band felt it didn't fairly represent the album or the band's general direction.

A whimsical lyric describing how the performer feels about the female fans in the audience. This song was the balance factor that made the thing sit comfortably as an entire album. In the case of Still .... You Turn Me On it was a kind of a love song, that brings more the passion of the music and the feeling of gentleness and tenderness. A lot of ELPs music is extremely agressive, very metal and very masculine, but not very tender.

Keith Emerson: "We tried doing 'Still .... You Turn Me On', as per arrangement but it sounds better if Greg does it on its own on his acoustic twelve-string. He is going to buy an electric twelve string and then we can probably arrange it a bit more like the album."

Still .... You Turn Me on was released as 7'' single only on a B-side for promotional use only

Interesting to hear is an early version of 'Still .... You Turn Me On' on the Video/DVD called 'The Manticore Special', performed live during the European tour in Spring 1973. This 53 minute documentary was originally aired on broadcast television in the UK on Boxing Day 1973, and finally in the United States on January 9th, 1974.

A little album trivia. According to the "Brain Salad Surgery" website, The art for the album cover was on exhibition in 1973 at The National Technical Museum of Prague and was never returned to the artist after the exhibition. It is presumed stolen.Link Very interesting album info on that site.

Edited by Guest
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"The Most Beautiful Girl"

Charlie Rich

Written by Bill Sherrill, Noris Wilson, and Rory Michael Bourke. Released in 1973 and went #1 in the US pop, country and adult contemporary charts.

According allmusic.com,

Charlie Rich is one of those soulful performers that could sing the phone book compellingly. His voice transcends the country music genre much as his crossover repertoire and style do. He's a soul singer, like other great country stylists George Jones and Merle Haggard. Teaming up with legendary countrypolitan producer/writer Billy Sherrill for the 1973 LP Behind Closed Doors, the pair produced some major genre-bending hits for the heyday of AM radio — the title cut and the poignant and memorable classic "The Most Beautiful Girl."

Written by Sherrill with Rory Bourke and Norro Wilson, "The Most Beautiful Girl" was chart-topper in both country and mainstream pop circles. It dated back to 1968 when Wilson, now a well-regarded producer in his own right, played as a performer in Chicago, staying at the home of Bourke, who was his record promoter but aspired to be a songwriter. After a night of whooping it up, Bourke awakened Wilson with a hot cup of coffee and a song he had started that he wanted help with. They wrote the song as &"Hey Mister, Did You Happen to See the Most eautiful Girl in the World?" Getting it finally into the hands of Sherrill, the producer shortened the unwieldy title, tweaked it, and recorded it with Rich.

The tale of heartbreak reads like a traditional honky tonk lyric, but the sophisticated melody is haunting and atypical for country music: "I woke up this morning/And realized what I had done/I stood alone in the cold grey dawn/I knew I'd lost my morning sun/I lost my head and I said some things/Now come the heartaches that the morning brings/I know I'm wrong and I couldn't see/I let my world slip away from me/So, hey, did you happen to see/The most beautiful girl in the world?/ And if you did, was she crying, crying?"

Sherrill pushes all the right — though predictable — buttons, with strings, backing singers, wistful pedal steel, and a seamlessly smooth sound. But really, not much is needed beyond the remarkably expressive voice of the very aptly named Rich, who came up at Sun Records but croons like the best blue-eyed soul singers, an almost overwhelming melancholy always present in his voice.

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  • 2 weeks later...

The Songfactor's Choice Top Ten #157

Lots of songs without facts from this top ten :D

Love Hurts - Gram Parsons and Emmylou Harris (1974)

Give Me Just A Little More Time - Chairmen Of The Board (1970)

Madman Across The Water - Elton John (1971)

Blood And Roses - The Smithereens (1986)

If you have any info on any of the songs mentioned anywhere in this thread, please feel free to post your knowledge here. Submissions on songs will be collated and sent to the main site and you will receive credit for your contribution.

The Songfish thanks you.

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The Songfactor's Choice Top Ten #158

THREE songs missing this week!

Laugh Laugh - The Beau Brummels (1965)

Just Like Me - Paul Revere & The Raiders (1965)

Kiss You All Over - Exile (1978)

If you have any info on any of the songs mentioned anywhere in this thread, please feel free to post your knowledge here. Submissions on songs will be collated and sent to the main site and you will receive credit for your contribution.

The Songfish thanks you.

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"Blood and Roses"

The Smithereens

Written by Pat DiNizio (singer and rhythm guitar).

Released as a single in 1986. Also a track from their album "Especially For You" (one of Kurt Cobain´s fave albums) and the theme for the movie "Dangerously Close" , also from 1986.

It reached #14 in the US charts and was their first hit.

Allmusic:

The Smithereens' first brush with national success came when MTV began airing a video for this song, which was tied into a mercifully forgotten film about rampaging teenagers called Dangerously Close; thankfully, the song proved to have a much longer shelf life than the movie. A sorrowful ode to a busted romance ( Pat DiNizio didn't have much of a knack for happy tunes about love), "Blood and Roses" is built around a solidly melodic bass line from Mike Mesaros, followed by a descending acoustic guitar figure from DiNizio; for the choruses and the breaks, lead guitarist Jim Babjak weighs in with some tough, fragmented electric guitar lines that add an air of defiance to the song's moody, sorrowful framework. According to Michael Azerrad's book Come as You Are: The Story of Nirvana, Kurt Cobain was quite fond of the Smithereens and used to often listen to a tape of Especially for You while driving to and from practice; it's impossible to say how much of an influence the band had on his music, but if you want to hear a possible prototype for Cobain's trademark quiet verses/loud chorus song structure, give "Blood and Roses" a listen.
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“Give Me Just a Little More Timeâ€

Chairmen of the Board

Written by Holland-Dozier-Holland but credited to "Ron Dunbar & Edyth Wayne" due to a pending lawsuit with Motown Records.

A single and a track from the album Chairmen of the Board -after the hit, it was reissued as "Give Me Just A Little More Time"-. Released in 1970 with "Since the Days of Pigtails" as B-side. It reached #3 at the Billboard charts and it was their first hit to reach the Top 40.

From Wikipedia: "Give Me Just a Little More Time" features Chairmen of the Board lead singer General Johnson as the narrator, begging a lover who rejected him to reconsider and give him "just a little more time".

The song was very similar to a Motown recording in more ways than one. Not only was it written and produced by Holland-Dozier-Holland, but the instrumental track was performed by members of The Funk Brothers, Motown's in-house band.

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"Madman Across The Water"

Elton John

Written by Elton John and Bernie Taupin. A track from his fourth album "Madman Across The Water".

Recorded in August and released in November 1971.

According wikipedia,

...the song "Madman Across the Water", was set to be released on Elton John's previous album Tumbleweed Connection. However, it was set aside and would eventually serve as the title track of this album.

Allmusic says that although most casual listeners remember Elton John’s work in terms of sentimental hits like "Your Song," his albums balanced these songs with darker, more ambitious songs that showed there was greater scope to his sound that just the catchy ditties that hit the charts. A good sampling of the dark undertone of John’s sound is the title track from 1971's Madman Across The Water. The lyrics to this epic tune are a chilling portrait of insanity, taken from the point of view of a troubled man living in a mental institution: "Is the nightmare black or are the windows painted?/Will they come again next week, can my mind really take it?" The music subtly underlines the creepy tone of the lyrics by combining verse melodies full of ornate, restlessly twisting phrases with a chorus that stomps along in an ominous fashion before giving way to the heartrending yet scary peak that underlines the couplet "But is in your conscience that you’re after/Another glimpse of the madman across the water?" Elton John’s recording of "Madman Across The Water" gives the song a suitably macabre mood with a cinematic arrangement that layers disorienting, swirling string riffs and stark piano lines over a lumbering, crashing beat from the rhythm section. John tops the song off with a vocal that builds from a casual croon to a gutsy, angry roar that shows off his underrated ability as a singer of rock and roll. The end result of all these touches is an intense rock epic that is every bit as unnerving in its own subtle way as the horror-themed rock that Alice Cooper was recording around the same time. "Madman Across The Water" was a little too lengthy and intense for a single release but has become a cult favorite with Elton John fans and periodically turns up in his concert sets (an orchestrated live version can be heard on Live In Australia).

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"Laugh, Laugh"

The Beau Brumells

Written by Ron Elliott.

Released in 1965. It reached #15 at the US charts.

allmusic:The American popular music industry spent much of 1964 in shock as the British Invasion brought one new English performer after another into the U.S. charts, marginalizing or eliminating any number of established recording acts. Inevitably, however, some people adopted an "if you can't beat 'em, join 'em" philosophy, and one of them was San Francisco entrepreneur Tom Donahue, who signed the quintet the Beau Brummels. The British-sounding name and Beatle haircuts indicated their intentions, as did the Merseybeat style of their debut single, "Laugh, Laugh," released on Donahue's Autumn Records label in December 1964 and reaching the Top 20 in early 1965. Guitarist Ron Elliott's composition was a song of romantic revenge in which a spurned lover delights vindictively in the subsequent spurning by someone else of the lover who spurned him. In a style that soon would come to be called folk-rock, the band used acoustic guitars, tambourine, and harmonica over a rock rhythm section. Lead singer Sal Valentino had a distinctive style, and he was augmented by cleverly arranged harmonies. "Laugh, Laugh" not only took off from the sound of British Invaders like the Beatles and the Searchers, it also looked forward to the 1965 sound of the Byrds and the Lovin' Spoonful. The Beau Brummels would score only one more major hit, the follow-up "Just a Little," but "Laugh, Laugh" was a pivotal song which demonstrated that new American groups could absorb and react to the new rock sound of Great Britain, itself a reaction to earlier U.S. rock music. The original recording has been much anthologized, not only on collections of '60s hits, but, because the Beau Brummels were one of the first rock bands in the Bay Area, of San Francisco rock music.

from wiki:

"Laugh, Laugh" is listed in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame as one of the 500 most influential songs that shaped rock and roll, and was also featured in the 1989 John Candy film Uncle Buck. On The Flintstones, in the 1965 episode based on the Shindig! TV series entitled "Shinrock A Go Go", the band was caricatured as "The Beau Brummelstones", singing "Laugh Laugh."
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"Just Like Me"

Paul Revere & The Raiders

Written by Rick Dey/Rich Brown.

Released as a single in 1965, it wnt to #11 in the US charts. Mark Lindsay was the singer. According wikipedia, it marked the beginning of a string of garage rock classics. ... and was one of the first rock records to feature a distinctive, double-tracked guitar solo by guitarist Drake Levin. The tune itself was originally written by Rick Dey and Rich Brown of the Longview-based band The Wilde Knights. Raiders manager Roger Hart paid them $5,000 for the use of the song

From allmusic:Just Like Me" was Paul Revere & the Raiders' first big hit and, along with "Hungry" and "Kicks," their best. (It was also, along with "Hungry" and "Kicks," the only single to fully justify their after-the-fact reputation as a tough raunchy band, as opposed to a more mainstream pop one.) On the record's opening instrumental prelude, they sound almost like a bridge between the Kingsmen and the Kinks, with the gripping downward swells of organ, followed by a bluesy upwards sweep of grinding chords. The up-and-down chord progression continues throughout the verses, in which Mark Lindsay delivers some of his best vocals, alternating between husky near-whispers to shredding screams. "Just Like Me" comes off as quite a Kinks-influenced song in several respects: those basic but maddeningly catchy riffs, Lindsay's vocals in the softer parts, and the berserk guitar solo in the instrumental break, which sounds like it wishes to continue for a minute or two before the organ breaks in with the opening riff. There was slightly more studio slickness to Paul Revere & the Raiders than the Kinks, perhaps, particularly with the fattening handclaps to accentuate the stop-start rhythm at points and the full backup vocal harmonies. It's still little known that "Just Like Me" was first recorded by an obscure Northwest band, the Wilde Knights, and written by one of that group's members, Rick Dey. That version includes a bluesy bridge excised when Paul Revere & the Raiders retooled the song. Paul Revere & the Raiders' cover definitely has the edge in all respects, from the fuller production and tougher guitar-organ sounds to the power of Lindsay's vocal

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"Love Hurts"

Gram Parsons and Emmylou Harris

Written by Boudleaux and Felice Bryant. The first version was by The Everly Brothers, released in July 1960. One year later, Roy Orbison recorded his version and had a hit with it.

Gram Parsons released it as a track from his second solo album, "Grievous Angel", released some months after Parson´s death.

"Grievous Angel" was originally called "Sleepless Nights"; the cover had both Parsons and Harris on it and the album was credited to "Gram Parsons with Emmylou Harris". But Parson´s widow changed the name and the picture before realesing it in 1974.

allmusic says that Parsons and Emmylou Harris only improved on this set, turning in a version of "Love Hurts" so quietly impassioned and delicately beautiful that it's enough to make you forget Roy Orbison ever recorded it

The song was covered by many musicians: Keith Richards & Norah Jones, Journey, Don McLean, Heart, Pat Boone, Nazareth, Cher, The Who, Jim Capaldi, the Bee Gees among others.

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  • 2 weeks later...

The Songfactor's Choice Top Ten #160

FOUR songs without facts this week:

Walk Away - James Gang (1971)

So. Central Rain (I'm Sorry) - R.E.M. (1984)

Bright Eyes - Art Garfunkel (1978)

Keep On Chooglin' - Creedence Clearwater Revival (1969)

If you have any info on any of the songs mentioned anywhere in this thread, please feel free to post your knowledge here. Submissions on songs will be collated and sent to the main site and you will receive credit for your contribution.

The Songfish thanks you.

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So. Central Rain (I'm Sorry) ~ R.E.M.

On 6th October 1983 R.E.M. had their first national TV appearance on "Late Night with David Letterman". They performed their hit "Radio Free Europe" and a second song that wasn't on Murmur. In fact it was "too new to have a title", this song was later known as "So. Central Rain".

The full length title wasn't used before it was released as a single. On the original album the song was simply called "So. Central Rain"

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Walk Away - James Gang (1971)

Mostly taken from Wiki:

Walk Away is off the album Thirds. It is the third studio album by James Gang, released in 1971, and is the last studio album led by Joe Walsh. The Walsh period comes to a close with the release of the live album James Gang Live in Concert.

On the liner notes to the LP version of this 1971 album, Joe Walsh is credited with "guitar, vocals, and train wreck" for his work on the song "Walk Away;" the third element was a wry commentary on the multi-tracked, cascading lead guitars that clash as the song fades out.

It was also put out as a single.

That's all I could find :help:

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"Bright Eyes"

Art Garfunkel

Written by Mike Batt for the movie "Watership Down", performed by Art Garfunkel in 1978.

It´s a track of his 1979 album, "Fate For Breakfast". It was the theme song of the movie

Wiki:

... the song relates to the transition into death highlighted by Hazel's close shave when he is shot by a farmer, and then years later when Hazel (then Hazel-rah) finally departs his body and enters the world of spirit. It may also be viewed in reference to the disease the rabbits refer to as "White Blindness" - actually Myxomatosis.

The song was immensely successful in the United Kingdom, staying at number one in the British charts for six weeks in 1979, selling over one million copies, becoming the biggest selling single of that year in the UK. However, it did poorly in the United States, failing to reach the Billboard Hot 100.

The song was covered by many performers: Matthew Butler ( a 6 year old child), Brotherhood of Man (1980)

Justin Hayward, James Dean Bradfield (The Manic Street Preachers), Stephen Gately, Joseph McManners

Declan Galbraith, Tommy Steele among others.

From BBC news:

Entering the lower reaches of the chart initially, the song, written by British composer Mike Batt for animated rabbit fantasy film Watership Down, eventually reached number one on 14 April.

The song famously features in the darkly psychedelic film after character Hazel escapes death after being shot by a farmer.

Garfunkel, one half of legendary duo Simon and Garfunkel, remembers being sent a demo tape of a "surreal, lovely, dark" song which "knocked me out".

"I knew my own tone of voice has a quasi-religious pop element to it and I knew that I can create goose bumps with this mysterious enquiry into 'what is this life and what is death for all of us?'" the 67-year-old says.

"So it's a wonderfully large, philosophical set of words."

Emotional moment

Those words did not come easily, initially, for Batt, given the brief by Watership Down director Martin Rosen of writing a song about death.

Radio 1 initially refused to play the song because it was "too slow"

It sold 1,155,000 copies

Art Garfunkel was in the UK when the song was number one, filming his movie Bad Timing

According to Mike Batt, the record was selling 60,000 records a day at one stage

"I remember coming home and thinking, 'wow, how do you write a song about death without it seeming ridiculously dark or totally stupid?'

"It was then that I started to think, 'well it's going to be a song about wondering and not knowing'.

"Therefore, the opening words, 'is it a kind of dream?' came into my mind as I was sitting playing at the piano.

"I sang, 'is it a kind of dream', and then that minor thing of, 'floating out on the tide'."

Batt, the songwriter behind furry 1970s children's favourites The Wombles, says he realised he was on to something because "you start singing it and you're so choked up you can't carry on".

Of the record's six weeks at number one, he says: "You're just driving around in a daze thinking, 'bloody hell' - you'd switch on the radio and there it'd be."

But his memories of Bright Eyes, recorded with "my hero" Garfunkel in London three years before, are not all positive.

"It was one of the most difficult sessions I've ever been involved in, we even just argued over the way it should be sung and everything," he says.

At the heart of the tension was a battle of wills over a duff guitar note, he adds.

"We did this great take which everyone loved including Art and yet there was one note, just one little slip."

Batt says he told Garfunkel that, with a 60-piece orchestra waiting to come into the studio to record, he would simply ask the guitarist to come back the next morning "to drop that note in".

"Art said 'no, I don't think we should do that, I think we should get it right now'," Batt adds.

'Tension disappeared'

The arrival of Columbia Records head Goddard Lieberson, executive producer of music for the film, ramped up the pressure on Batt.

He says that, after hearing the recording of the string section, Lieberson told him: "I don't like the arrangement."

"I thought 'how rude' so I said, 'that's all right, I'll go then, I'll take my song and you can get someone else to write a song'."

He adds: "I walked out through the orchestra with my score in my hand and I drove off in my car."

The film's director Martin Rosen persuaded him to return to the studio to continue with the arrangement on his own terms.

And when Batt and Garfunkel listened back and realised they had made a hit, "all the tension and distrust had suddenly ebbed away", he adds.

Batt says that, when the record hit number one, Garfunkel called him.

"He said, 'Mike, I just wanted to say thanks and to share with you that we did so well with the record'.

I saw that the vocal was winning and that made me think, 'this record, mix it right and you have very lovely pop tune here'

Art Garfunkel:"I said, 'yeah, isn't it funny that you can have such a tense session and yet the record come out so well and be so successful'?

"He said, 'what tension?' He hadn't remembered any of it - he'd blanked all the bad bits."

Garfunkel makes no mention of any tension in the studio, saying only that he thought the track's backing was in place before he turned up to perform his vocal.

But, regardless of their differing memories of Bright Eyes, both come alive when speaking of their pride in the finished product. "Sometimes you have a good hair day and some days you don't.

"I saw that the vocal was winning and that made me think, 'this record, mix it right and you have very lovely pop tune here'."

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