Blender magazine, July 2006

[ira]

Ditto Zuke-"Ain't Gonna Lie" is a teriffic "Lost Hit".-Ira.

[Eric Carmen]

I doubt that we'll ever see anything like them ever again. The business has become too sophisticated. Maybe the internet and the eventual "deconstruction" of the music business will help, but I'm not sure. There were so many elements involved. We were lucky to be around to witness it. What's funny is you can't really explain Beatlemania to someone who wasn't there. It's outside the realm of logic. ec

[raspberrywine]

I read some gobbledegook by some socialogist once that said events such as Beatlemania actually stem from our longing for God, or at least the numinous, which is essentially and perhaps emotionally hardwired. Since we cant readily experience God directly in our lives, we tend to make the object of this longing human objects at times, whether rock bands or politically leaders etc. I think that does , on some levels, explain the reaction to them, that reaction alive to this day even in young generations. It doesnt explain their inexplicable talent, which may also have something to do with God though we arent aware of it. Who knows, but they were awfully special . Another interesting note of their story I've often observed is that things that are awfully good can often be surrounded with tremendous sadness and tragedy. You see this throughout their story and its somewhat interesting.

[sterling]

I would agree with what has been said already about the Fab Four. They were certainly very very unique and I agree with Eric that we will never see anything quite like it again. I would also add that their timing came at a national time of depression for our country. That is something unless you lived through it you would not understand it. We had this tremendously popular president who was youthful and idealistic and popular with a beautiful wife and young kids. Then in one moment he was gone. That time immedidately following President Kennedy's assassination was very depressing. I was a freshman in high school. Some schools called off on the day of his funeral but we had to attend. We would go from one class to the next and watch one black and white tv after another of seeing Mrs. K and the kids and all the people in Washington walking around like zombies. You talk about depressing!!!

So then Capitol Records started promoting them around Christmas and there was this great buildup of anticipation of Beatles Coming to America. Then the Ed Sullivan Show and the rest is history. Their songs made you feel so good and they were so uplifting. None of what I just described could be explained to anyone to understand unless they lived through it. Kind of like my folks telling me about the Depression in the thirties or WWII and the shortages and sacrifices. So they had timing here in America on their side.

I also remember the press saying there would be a new group that would be the second coming. First it was The Monkees. Uh no...that did not work. Then it was the Bay City Rollers....Go figure...they only had one song! They definitely had what it took and then some. As far as a group is concerned, The Beach Boys with Brian Wilson as their composer may have come the closest but they actually preceded the Fab Four by a few months here. So many of the Beatle and Beach Boy catalog have stood the test of time and are truely "timeless". I feel fortunate to have lived through those times and have the soundtrack to my life that I do have. Oh...I almost forgot that Motown if you put a lot of together was very prolific and quality stuff. If you ever get to see a movie on DVD and VHS called "The Funk Brothers" I would highly highly recommend it. It is about all the guys who backed up all those great acts from Motown. I have rambled enough.

Phil

[ira]

From what I'm told there were 3 "Landmark" Musical-Cultural Explosions:

1)-Sinatra and the "Bobby Soxers".

2)-Elvis in the 50's.

3)-The Beatles and The British Invasion.

I wasn't really around or old enough for the first two. But I gotta think The coming of the Beatles and their English peers, and their 6 year reign from '64-'70-made a bigger "BOOM" on the Cultural Richter Scale than anything that has come before or since.-Ira.

[Zuke]

Ira,

Your list goes through the decades.

40's, 50's and 60's. I always gave the 70's to Elton John then Disco(and the Bee Gees)ruined everything. The Bee Gees, great song writers but look what they started.

Zuke

[Paul Davie]

As for the Beatles, there aren't that many coincidences in the universe...it was absolutely meant to happen. I believe that some things/people have a certain magnetism for others: call it seeking one's own level of talent/genius, or recognizing it when it is anywhere within the limits of even a large city--or country--but some people are just meant to "find each other." True in the case of the Beatles, true in the case of Raspberries.

--Darlene

Darlene...that was one of the sweetest things I've ever read.

When I turned 40 last year, my divorce was just finalized, and I REALLY dug deep about what I was all about...to find the meaning of life.

I believe that our lives were 'pre-programmed' by a higher Source, and that when we teach ourselves to keep connected to it - wonderful, inexplicable things happen to us. ie. Synchronicities.

What I've learned in the past year? I was MEANT to:

1. be named 'Paul' by a couple of parents who played Sinatra instead of rock

2. to love The Beatles more than any band, which would lead me on the path of discovering The Hollies, Badfinger & The Raspberries

3. to live in Liverpool...NY, and to have a great Beatles/British Invasion band

4. to fall deeply & unconditionally in love with a girl named Linda, who...

5. i went to college with 20 years ago, but only casually knew back then, but totally supports me and communicates wonderfully

6. to buy a Hofner Beatle Bass that 'talked to me' at a vintage guitar show - production #1665 (last week of April 1965) - the week I was born!!

7. to develop professional & even personal relationships with two of my heroes - Terry from The Hollies & Joey from Badfinger.

8. in booking T & J for a concert in Feb 2004, I actually re-united two old friends who hadn't seen each other in 40 years...now they perform all the world together

9. to play bass & piano for those two heroes in THEIR Liverpool...in England, at The Cavern in August. (Terry's band, The Escorts, were hand picked by The Beatles to open for them at their very last Cavern performance in 1962. Of course, Joey worked directly with all four Beatles)

10. and in hanging out with those two legends, i get to hear all the great stories about the 60's & 70's scene that you WON'T read about in books!!

sorry if this lengthy. i just hope others reach for their dreams, and to be true to their hearts.

thanks, darlene for inspiring me to write this tonight!

[Trindy]

Here's what I think.

I HATE, absolutely HATE to see Eric and Wally still fighting over this old crap. I had a feeling when I started to read this that a lot of what Wally said had been cut out of that article and apparently it is true.

This is one of the great songs of all time. And the riff is part of what makes it magical. And how Wally, being Wally, played that riff is essential to what makes it work. Eric, would it kill you to give him full credit for that? I think he deserves it. I really, really do. It's the coming together of the yin and yang that makes this song work and always has. I wish the yin and the yang would stop fighting about it already and that the yin would give credit to what the yang did for it.

Now. Let me also say this. Each year XM Radio has this event called "IT" that spans all the "decades channels," in which they attempt to play every charting hit from the 1930s through 1999. They start it on the '40s channel and it migrates from there to the '50s, '60s, '70s, etc. When they did it last fall, it was the first true chance I had had since 1972 to hear what GATW sounded like up against all the other stuff that was being played on the radio back at the same time it was. And you know what? Compared to GATW, everything else surrounding it sounded like a piece of CRAP! The other songs SOUNDED dated...like period pieces of their era...but when GATW burst out of my radio, it alone sounded as fresh and new as the day it came out. That is NOT something any old song can do. And it's something to be proud of.

Yeah, so Eric wrote it. But it's that Wally riff, and apparently the way he played it--not to mention the limiter that Oscar Mayered it to the hilt, as everyone says--that MADE IT. That turned it from something that was just kind of lying there into something where ALL the elements came together. Something that sounded like they were playing the Painesville Armory...then, and now. Something that made it immortal.

I'd love to see Wally get full credit for that.

And that's my two cents.

I will now slink back under my rock.

[James]

I'm a huge Wally Bryson fan....he's my fave guitar player of them all. I love all his penned Raspberry tunes and think he's an underrated song writer. To me, the synergy between Eric Carmen & Wally Bryson is what made the Raspberries the Raspberries...why the group is very much a different entity than Eric Carmen solo.

But he DID NOT write the riff (see earlier Eric Carmen post). And thus he should not be given credit as co-writer of the song....unless I'm missing something.

[Eric Carmen]

The real reason that Eric solo is different from Eric in the Raspberries is that "power pop", as much as it was my first love, was pretty much dead in the water by 1975. "Starting Over" was critically acclaimed and sold the fewest records of any of our albums. I would have been beating a dead horse AND just plain stupid if I had continued to make records that no one would buy. Unfortunately, once "All By Myself' became the monster hit that it did, Arista was pretty reluctant to try anything very different. Such is life. I didn't change. I tried something different and it became so successful that I got stuck in a box, just like at Capitol after "Go All The Way." That's just the way the business works sometimes. In the meantime, I must tell you, even though it may not be as much "fun" as the Raspberries music I wrote, "All By Myself" (along with 'Almost Paradise" "Never Gonna Fall In Love Again" and a few others) has allowed me to raise a family,pay the bills and live pretty comfortably without having to resort to a lot of the embarrassing things some performers are forced to do to make ends meet. ec

[darlene]

Paul, Thank you. I, too, believe in "synchronicities." That's a great term, by the way! You must read Dr. Wayne Dyer too. Your philosophy is very "in tune" with his.

I think I've mentioned that my favorite line of his is, "When you change the way you look at things, the things you look at change."

If one does it, and believes it will work (and it does!), it *will* work.

I just believe that "Raspberries were meant to be," and for me, that's one of the truths of the universe. Just like the Beatles.

Somewhere in all of our enthusiasm, we always dredge up the old fights the guys try to stay away from. They will do what they do, but no matter what happens, relax. Raspberries were meant to be--and they will be. No silly misunderstanding over a Blender article is going to change what's "written in the stars." Right, Paul?

--Darlene

[Raspbernie]

Trindy,

There are countless examples of GREAT, IMPORTANT, SONG-DEFINING guitar licks that were played by guitarists without songwriting credit. Why? Because songwriting essentially refers to lyrics and melody. On "Go All the Way," Eric actually wrote the intro's chords, which makes it even less of an argument.

But let's take a look at one of the ALL-TIME GREATEST licks in rock and roll history: the intro to "Layla." Why isn't Duane Allman, who came up with the famous riff, given songwriting credit when those notes he plays and the way he plays them define the song? Because they're based on the chords Eric Clapton wrote for the song's chorus.

In Scott Freeman's book, "Midnight Riders," Freeman says Clapton just considered the song to be "a little ditty," recorded after most of the other songs on the album were already done, but when Duane Allman heard it, he said to up the tempo into a rocker, then he came up with the intro. The book says people who knew Duane Allman said he would always brighten up when he heard the intro and say, "that's my lick!" but only in private, never in public.

How many Lennon & McCartney Beatles songs, where George's guitar work define an important part of the tune, did Paul and John give him songwriting credit on? I'll tell you how many…None!

With all of that said, Wally's playing on the intro to "Go All The Way" is SUPER-SPECTACULAR!!! I think it's time for him to start feeling proud of *that* MAJOR ACCOMPLISHMENT rather than continue convincing himself that he got ripped off somehow -- because it's all in his mind. He didn't.

Bernie

[Eric Carmen]

I appreciate your sentiments Trindy, (and Wally's too, for that matter) but "writing" and "playing" are not the same. Davey Johnstone played a very similar lick on the beginning of "Saturday Night's Alright For Fighting" but he doesn't get a writing credit for it. There are a couple of million more examples that are exactly the same. When you play in a band, you bring the song in and work it up with the musicians in the band. Sometimes everyone contributes to the arrangement, sometimes the writer has a specific idea of what he's looking for. I've always heard my songs as" finished records" in my head. By the time I finish writing a song, I have a pretty damn good idea what it should sound like. "Go All The Way" was no exception. Whether I was in the "Berries, or working with session musicians I've always worked the same way. The musicians get payed to "play", the writers get paid for "writing." Wally played the intro of "Go All The Way" brilliantly and the song wouldn't have been the same without him. But it wouldn't have been the same without Dave and Jim and Jimmy Ienner and Shelley Yakus either. Should they all be credited as "writers"? The answer is "no". The band got credit for "performing", the producer got credit for "producing", the engineer got credit for "engineering" and the writer got credit for "writing." As the writer, I came up with the the title, the concept, every word, every note of the melody, every chord and the arrangement. Wally worked out the "riff" with me just as Jim and I worked out the drum part. That doesn't constitute "writing". End of story. ec

[raspberrywine]

To extrapolate further we can think of a million different situations where a songwriter creates a song and then its "given" to an artist to perform. The artist may be accompanied by a hoard of studio musicians who each bring something different to the song also. But neither the performing artist or the attending musicians receive a song writing credit and often when you hear the song, as orginally intended by the composer ,its a completely and different arrangement. Which leads me to my point which is; any thoughts on why some pop/rock albums tend to give arrangement credits and many choose to not identify it as any separate entity from songwriting?

[Eric Carmen]

It seems to me that arrangement credits kind iof went out of style after the early sixties. If you look at records that were big productions that came before the Beatles, you can sometimes find an arranger credit. Jack Nietzche was the arranger on a lot of Phil Spector's records, for instance (You've Lost That Lovin' Feeling"). I think he also arranged "I've Got You Babe" for Sonny and Cher. Quincy Jones produced Lesley Gore's "It's My Party" and used Klaus Ogerman, who is today one of the heaviest orchestral jazz arrangers on the planet. After The Beatles, a lot of groups were doing their own arrangements so the credit went away. Today it's usually used to designate who arranged the string and horn charts. ec

[Tony Cartmill]

So just to clarify again. Before you and Wally worked out the guitar fingering of the riff, You had the main chords and the rhythm syncopation of the riff already written? If YES, there is no argument...

What's all the hullabaloo about?

[ira]

Man-this is so unreal-getting your thoughts,insights, and remembrances, on an almost daily basis.

Thanks again Eric. I hope we all bring you a little joy too.-Ira.

[Eric Carmen]

Tony, YES! The chords and rhythm that begin the "bridge" are identical to the intro. I couldn't have put the bridge together without them.I got the idea from the intro and bridge of "Wouldn't It Be Nice" where Brian uses the instrumental of the bridge as the intro for the song. I thought it was a great idea and decided to try it out. "Go All The Way" was the guinea pig. I just borrowed the "construction" from "Pet Sounds." That's why this whole discussion drives me insane! I used "Alright Now" and "Won't Get Fooled Again" as examples of how "hard" I wanted the guitar to sound. Wally tried it on different frets. When he hit the right fret and used the "Pete Townshend, Kid's Are Alright" fingering I said "That's the one!" He played the daylights out of it, but the chords and rhythm were already determined by the bridge. All that ever was in question was what fret it would sound best on. ec

[Tony Cartmill]

Thank you EC. I was already in your camp on this one anyway...The detailed explanations here might even make Johnny Cocharan say, "No further questions, your honor..."

[Kirk]

"If it ain't trite, you didn't write!"-Wally Cochran, Johnny's brother Kirk.

[Eric Carmen]

This is hopefully going to be my last post on this subject, but it's one that anyone who's on the fence ought to consider. If I did what Wally keeps implying I did, use something he wrote and didn't give him credit for it, AND collected all the subsequent royalties from it, why on earth would he have continued working with me? I wouldn't have stayed in a band for two minutes if anyone ever did that to me! Why would he continue to work out all those guitar intros on"Tonight" and "Ecstasy" and "I'm A Rocker" with a guy who would do something like that? Wally helped write the lyric of "I Saw The Light" and he got credit. Wally and I wrote "Don't Wanna Say Goodbye" (our first single) and he got credit. If he had had anything to do with writing "Go All The Way" I would have happily shared the credit with him. He didn't. ec

[LC]

Hi Eric,

I would guess that 99.9% of the people here (and there) would agree with you.

A composition is a composition. What happens after that is another process, as illustrated again and again in this thread. The Beatles example was a great one; Tony's and Bernie's points were, too. And your notes in your 10:47 a.m. post today drives the point home. (You supported the argument quite well with the Davey Johnstone example. Another would be Billy Joel's "Big Shot"; Steve Khan isn't listed as co-writer. I also liked your "where-do-you-draw-the-line?" point. Imagine a songwriting credit of "Carmen/Bryson/Smalley/Bonfanti/Ienner/Yakus/MomCarmen/etc." Who would have accepted the Grammy that 'GATW" should have won?)

Trindy, in your post (where you asked, "Would it kill you to give Wally full credit?), I wasn't sure if you asking Eric to simply offer a pat on the back or verbal kudos to Wally --- or actually suggesting that he cave in and change the credit to a co-authorship.

If it's the former, heck, I've read all kinds of interviews with Eric (including one I did) where he acknowledges Wally's contribution. If it's the latter, by now you've probably changed your mind on the issue, given the other posts in this thread. It's really not that much different in our world (publishing). A writer writes and gets the byline. The other folks who touch and improve upon a feature or column or news story or book (including editors, copy editors, and proofreaders) don't share in --- or expect --- a co-byline. They just contribute to a different part of the process.

Overall, this has been a fun thread to read. Very enlightening. The funniest part of it: "Go All the Way" is credited (erroneously, and ironically) as a Carmen/Bryson song on the back of Raspberries' first album.

I'd also like to say that I agree with James: Wally's my favorite guitarist ever, and his work on those four great Raspberries albums was a key part of what made them practically perfect.

[Eric Carmen]

Why do you think I wanted to play in a band with him? ec

[Raspbernie]

The funniest part of it: "Go All the Way" is credited (erroneously, and ironically) as a Carmen/Bryson song on the back of Raspberries' first album.

That first pressing LP misprint may have been what got all of this controversy started. I'm wondering if anyone has a 7" single credited to anyone besides Eric. All of mine just say "Eric Carmen."

Bernie

[pierson]

6. to buy a Hofner Beatle Bass that 'talked to me' at a vintage guitar show - production #1665 (last week of April 1965) - the week I was born!! [/QB]

Being that you're from the Syracuse area, I hope you've heard Hamell On Trial's song "7 Seas" which is all about his guitar & how they "met"-- it's pure genius.... the guitar did speak to him as well... AND it's truly a part of his sound