Rock and Roll; In The Groove

I'm hopeful that we get. So here. We are happy to remind you that you have an let me quick comments. No it's not possible is it. We're making a record here you know I mean I'm I'm very happy. OK time and Shadow Morton and I are up in our offices one day with the acetate of remember walking in the sand by this group called the Shangri-Las and he was there saying golly he wrote the songs and taught them the songs and produced the sessions and these were kind of teen soap operas. He was rather brilliant at it he was very original and he got the name shadow because. We would never know where he was will be waiting for him and suddenly discover that he was in the corner of the room and he would leave just as mysteriously. Yeah you sort of like the Invisible Man. You know the kid was one of the best looking young men I'd seen

and maybe 25 or 30 years and I thought it would be great for him. You know if he would go to the after school because he had he had this artistic quality there's no question about it. But he was completely an educator you know and he didn't really have any formal education. Everything he did was from really gut instinct and everything he did had that kind of originality about it you know. And he's a good guy and we both liked him a lot. You spent over three years with you on that when you wrote it as opposed to compare you with Korea. So you have some reflection of how you feel about the record but for the record I think it was a little broader a little deeper than that. I'm their song and they named the song. Yeah. Is that all there is or was originally an experiment. Actually I started writing that song

the lyrics on the song in 1966 and that we had broken up the record company and we'd given it to George Goldner and we just had the publishing company left and Mike and myself were wondering what to do next as for some forward motion and what we were thinking about was really the theater because we all had we always had one eye on the theater and I started playing around with some song ideas that were a little bit more complicated than the new normal stuff the usual stuff we had written. And I was working in a way that I thought where I thought we could come up with some cabaret type material. And there's a very interesting there's a there's a number of stories attached to the song I'd like to get to the part that's really kind of confounding with money but I'm alive and well I have to tell you this is part in a minute I'm making this very short because through it it's

today. It's too late to make a long story short is what I mean. Yeah. OK so why don't you tell that once you tell the mysterious part of the writing of the song. Well what happened was the jury had written. Very provocative vignettes. And I said to him Well I would like to set that to some music but I don't think that they ought to be song or rhyme or. Well obviously they were already on rhyme and have them recited. So I created a musical background to the vignettes. And at that time George Brown who had starred in all over Broadway was going to return to London after many years in

the States. And she came up she said I would love you guys to give me some material for my return show in London London television. And since we had this we we played it. She and her arranger Peter Matz fell in love with it and they said well but is there a refrain is there something that comes in between we have a refrain we just performed it and they fell in love with it. It wasn't a bad refrain. But when they left Jerry and I looked at each other and said you know it doesn't really make any sense. And Jay said well look I'm going to I want to work on it and I said OK I'm going to go home and think about it. And when I came back to his apartment the next day and I said hey I got a telly so when I got a lyric I said well wait let me play you the film is The World.

All right go ahead. And I played a good tune. And as I started to play it he said look I don't have to adjust one note and he didn't have to with just one syllable. It fit absolutely perfectly. There's only one rhyme in the entire piece which is have a ball If that's all. And that's when the cadence fell. This is about what you record business what what what what what brand. Which is what more than the record business. What is more. Oh a lot more. Oh oh I see. You know I think you know I was a certain point in my life where I was sort of I think the main thing about you know because feelings up and down you know artists always have all kinds of severe swings at least I always did.

But more than more than talking about literally was it an expression of my my life or my melancholy or disappointment or whatever as it well might be as also some of those the funniest songs you'll ever hear are expressions of the same kind of melancholy just turned the other way you know. Did you know deal with it. You know I mean all the clowns are really you know miserable depressives right. That this song was more an expression of an adult attitude. Most of us were sort of tired of playing around in the adolescent you know creative ditch writing simple rock n roll songs we'd done that for all of our lives from at least what from 950 til you know nine hundred sixty six and we did a lot of it and we really were I think longing to create things on our own level. You know we had become adults and we wanted to write

adult material and that was the first attempt to write something more complex and more adult than we had. Do

you know yours. You. Hold down. Thank you. Thank.

YOU A GOOD. Night. Down.

There.