If you ever wanted to know the background of some of the greatest hits, Marc Meyers has written the perfect book to find out the facts. Anatomy of a Song is a browser’s delight. Elvis had a Number One hit, “Good Luck Charm,” in 1962. When Elvis went into the recording studio in Memphis in 1969 it had been seven years since he had a Number One song. Elvis ended his drought when he recorded “Suspicious Minds.” It’s one of my favorite Elvis songs and it zoomed to the top of the charts. Marc Meyers provides information about the songwriter and the producer of each of the songs along with historical information. If you love Rock, R&B, and Pop music then you’ll find Anatomy of a Song fascinating! GRADE: A
TABLE OF CONTENTS:
1. Lawdy Miss Clawdy By Lloyd Price
2. K. C. Loving By Little Willie Littlefield
3. Shout By The Isley Brothers
4. Please Mr. Postman By The Marvelettes
5. Runaround Sue By Dion DiMucci
6. Chapel of Love By The Dixie Cups
7. You Really Got Me By The Kinks
8. You’ve Lost That Lovin’ Feeling By The Righteous Brothers
9. My Girl By The Temptations
10. Reach Out I’ll Be There By The Four Tops
11. Darling Be Home Soon By John Sebastian
12. Light My Fire By The Doors
13. Groovin’ By The Young Rascals
14. White Rabbit By The Jefferson Airplane
15. Different Drum By The Stone Poneys
16. (Sittin’ On) The Dock of the Bay By Otis Redding
17. Fist City By Loretta Lynn
18. Street Fighting Man By The Rolling Stones
19. Stand By Your Man By Tammy Wynette
20. Magic Carpet Ride By Steppenwolf
21. Proud Mary By Creedence Clearwater Revival
22. Oh Happy Day By The Edwin Hawkins Singers
23. Suspicious Minds By Elvis Presley
24. Whole Lotta Love By Led Zeppelin
25. Mercedes Benz By Janis Joplin
26. Moonlight Mile By The Rolling Stones
27. Maggie May By Rod Stewart
28. Carey By Joni Mitchell
29. Respect Yourself By The Staple Singers
30. The Harder They Come By Jimmy Cliff
31. Midnight Train to Georgia By Gladys Knight & The Pips
32. Ramblin’ Man By The Allman Brothers
33. Rock the Boat By The Hues Corporation
34. Walk This Way By Aerosmith
35. Love’s in Need of Love Today By Stevie Wonder
36. Deacon Blues By Steely Dan
37. (The Angels Wanna Wear My) Red Shoes By Elvis Costello
38. Heart of Glass By Blondie
39. Another Brink in the Wall By Pink Floyd
40. London Calling By The Clash
41. Brother John/Iko Iko By The Neville Brothers
42. Big City By Merle Haggard
43. Time After Time By Cyndi Lauper
44. Nick of Time By Bonnie Raitt
45. Losing My Religion By R.E.M.
That sentence about Good Luck Charm and Suspicious Minds isn’t clear! The book looks interesting but of course I won’t get it! I have too much to read already!
Bob, I’ll try to fix up that rambling sentence. But ANATOMY OF A SONG is full of great details about those hits. Well worth a look!
Oh, this is going on my tbr list immediately! It’s full of the kind of pop culture stuff I love. Plus, I think we all need a good dip-into-able book just about now.
Deb, you’ll love ANATOMY OF A SONG. I love “Behind the Music” stories!
Great idea for a book. Must have taken a lot of research.
Patti, Marc Meyers has been working on ANATOMY OF A SONG for years. He’s done some great work here.
Sounds like my kind of book.
Bill, you would enjoy all the detail about what went into making these songs hits. I learned a lot!
Great book. I’ll put it on my list at the library.
the only song I ever heard any “tidbits” about is you’re so vain, and Carly Simon calling on Mick Jagger to sing Backup.
I’ll be seeing Jeff & Jackie later today
Maggie, ANATOMY OF A SONG is your kind of book. Say “Hi!” to Jeff and Jackie for me!
Sounds interesting. Unfortunately my library doesn’t have it.
Steve, just ask the librarians to order ANATOMY OF A SONG. The librarians at the North Tonawanda Public Library buy everything I request.
You’re lucky. It’s rare that a book I request is purchased. I don’t have your “pull”.
Rick, it helps that I have a degree in Library Science so I know how to talk to librarians in Library-speak.
I can’t request books at the library I use. I can’t put books on hold or borrow E books. I use a library other than my home library of Pontiac(a mini Detroit) which gets hardly anything other than African American related titles. They haven’t even bought a Stephen King book in years.
Steve, most of our libraries have an inter-loan system where you can request just about any book and they’ll ship it to your home library.
This really sounds like a book for me. I’m curious how close the truth behind “You’ve Lost That Lovin’ Feeling” conforms to the story in BEAUTIFUL.
We saw “Big Elvis” performing in the bar at Harrah’s and his big finale was a rousing version of “Suspicious Minds.”
OK. I put it on hold.
Are these really the most “ICONIC HITS THAT CHANGED ROCK …”?
I would have thought of other titles!
Re 39: Another Brink in the Wall By Pink Floyd is obviously a misprint … 🙂
A bit OT on that song (I may have written about this before).
When I met my “new” girl (we were already both over 60 then) her family, especially her two sons were a bit sceptical at first but then they accepted me. The moment I could tell was at Xmas when her older son visited us and gave me his present for us:
two tickets for the show “The Wall” by Roger Waters in the boxing arena in Budapest!
And when I started to think how to arrange that (The Capital is a two hour drive from us) he said: look at the third piece of paper – it was a reservation for the hotel that is connected to the arena …
It was one of he most fantastic experiences for us – of course the building and demolishing of that wall (made of large styrofoam blocks) on the stage was one of the highlights – and the music too of course.
The audience was multi-kulti, multi-language from all over Europe, of course many US expats too and it was so well behaved and friendly!
We had a beer outside at a stand after the show and funny talks with all kind of people – I’ll never forget that evening!
What a great gift, Wolf!
We’ve seen Waters a couple of times on his own at beneither concerts.
Wolf, I love Pink Floyd and THE WALL. I’d buy tickets to that performance in a heartbeat!
Totally OT:
Leonard Cohen passed away – I’m as sad as GRRM in whose blog I just read it … http://grrm.livejournal.com/506482.html
And the world is small: He says that he based some of his stories on Leonard’s songs – and one of these stories (or rather several) are the base for a planned movie:
In the lost lands – to be directed by a German:
http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/heat-vision/milla-jovovich-final-talks-star-769165
Wolf, I loved Leonard Cohen’s early work. It’s sad that Cohen had financial problems late in life and had to tour just to pay his bills.
The only song I have never heard of is the Stevie Wonder which sounds terrible by its title alone. Probably the only songs here I don’t like is Rock the Boat and Fist City.
Steve, I agree that “Rock the Boat” was an odd choice.
Ya-hoo! My library has it on order. Not surprisingly, there is a long waiting list.
Rick, you have plenty of books to keep you busy until ANATOMY OF A SONG rolls in.
my library doesn’t have it, and very rarely if at all order books requested.
I used to donate books to my local branch. I was friendly with the librarian and she let me look at the list of books she could order. I’d go thru it and see what I had received for review that I didn’t want and mark it so she didn’t order it. I donated over 125 book in about a year until she said they couldn’t accept any more as they had no room to store them. They couldn’t add the books to the system at the branch and the main library was over a year behind in processing them. (I’d told her I would donate them to be put in circulation rather than sell them for a buck and she preferred that). After that, there was a new branch of the county library opened and an article in the paper about how they only had enough books to fill 20% of the shelves. I offered the new review books to be put into circulation and was told I couldn’t put restrictions on them, and they’d sell them to make $ to buy new books. I vainly pointed out that these were brand new – 2 months old books, not read, most by known authors and major publishers. Nope they would sell them for $1. It didn’t matter that the majority of their shelves were empty. I declined to donate and found a place to sell them.
Maggie, I’m seeing the same phenomenon at local public libraries. They refuse book donations on a regular basis. It’s sad.