Raise All Kinds Of Candy To The Stars

“Aquarius…And my name is Ralph…Now I like a woman who loves her freedom…And I like a woman who can hold her own…” It sounds like Studio 54’s in-house video dating agency. It teeters dangerously on the tightrope of tackiness, but its modes persist into contemporary R&B, even though its dual camp and experimental factors enable it to fly far beyond those particular boundaries. “Libra…And my name is Charles…Now I like a woman that’s quite…A woman who carries herself like…Miss Universe…” The Floaters were lucky to get their one moment. A Detroit soul group formed by James Mitchell, formerly of The Emeralds of “Feel The Need In Me” (again, in Britain they had to be called the “Detroit Emeralds”) and featuring his brother Paul as well as Larry Cunningham, Charles Clark and Ralph Mitchell (no relation), their full-length album version of “Float On” lasts for over eleven minutes, and “Papa Was A Rollin’ Stone” it is not – although what it could be is a belated sequel to...

In many ways, this is a strange and rather old-fashioned song for the mid-seventies, even though the events which it describes were then only a year old. The SS Edmund Fitzgerald was for over seventeen years a Great Lakes freighter, transporting pellets of iron ore from mines near Duluth, Minnesota, to iron works in Detroit, Toledo and other Great Lake ports. On the afternoon of 9 November 1975, under the command of its Canadian captain Ernest M McSorley, the ship set sail from Lake Superior, bound for Detroit. But an early storm broke the following day; the ship filled up with water and then capsized – or possibly split – and sank, and although the wreck of the ship was found a few months later, none of the bodies of its twenty-nine-strong crew has ever been found. It sank in Canadian waters. Lightfoot read an article about the disaster in Newsweek , which helped unlock his long-standing writer’s block and inspire the song. He tells the story as simply as possible, though acco...

It’s odd how power pop, for all its alleged purity and perfection, never really became popular. Myself, I think it’s the charts’ loss, but the fact remains that when most people think of Alex Chilton they think of “The Letter” rather than Sister Lovers , to which “All By Myself” makes an unlikely companion. The song also reminds us of the age-old tradition of writing pop songs based on classical pieces; Barry Manilow had recently had a top ten hit with his Chopin adaptation “Could It Be Magic” and now it was the turn of Rachmaninoff. Again it is instructive to listen to the full seven-minute-plus album version of “All By Myself” since the long piano interlude in the song’s middle was actually the first thing that came to Eric Carmen’s mind. Working backwards, he then figured that the second movement of Rachmaninoff’s Piano Concerto No. 2 in C minor – “ Adagio sostenuto ,” no less – would form a good basis for the song’s verses, while the chorus was informed by, but did not...

Moving from 1975 to 1976, from Eagles to Donna Summer, is a bit like stepping out of a wagon and straight onto a spaceship. Neither did it hinder the success of “Love To Love You Baby” that its American release coincided with the onset of this new DJ invention called the twelve-inch single. It had already been released in Holland in mid-1975 under the name of “Love To Love You” – the initial lyric was Summer’s idea; Pete Bellotte wrote the music and Giorgio Moroder produced. However, the lyric was built upon and extended and Summer became reluctant to record the whole song, except as a demo for other singers. Nonetheless, she also provided a commentary which went beyond words, and Moroder was so impressed by her…exultation, let’s call it?...that he persuaded Summer that the record should be released internationally under her own name. Somehow a copy found its way to Neil Bogart, the head of Casablanca Records; the story goes that he was attending his wife’s birthday party a...

Goodness gracious, we’ve reached the end of 1975 already. Yes, there were a lot of number ones in that year and only five singles – four if you don’t count “Calypso” – got stuck in second place. Ah well, on to 1976 next week. The first thing I ought to say is that there is no typo; the band was always called “Eagles,” not “ The Eagles.” The second thing I ought to point out is that Eagles are the most successful pop group in American chart history; indeed, their Greatest Hits (1971-1975) collection regularly tussles with Thriller for the title of best-selling album ever. They became hugely successful without seeming to move as much as an aesthetic finger, and their colossal success seems to me to indicate how readily people will opt for the easy solution. I do own a copy of the One Of These Nights album for the sole reason that it includes the best thing Eagles ever did, Bernie Leadon’s psychedelic banjo/orchestral meditation “Journey Of The Sorceror” which is far b...