← Hit Parade | Music History and Music Trivia
Hit Parade | Music History and Music Trivia
Without The Beatles
01:07:56
This month, Hit Parade explores the legacy of songs by The Beatles topping the charts...without The Beatles. This is the story of how a discarded Beatles song, a superstar vanity cover, and a bizarre disco medley managed to top the charts with Beatles songwriting credits, but without the fab four.
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You're listening ad free on Amazon Music.
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Let's do it.
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Welcome to Hit Parade, a podcast of pop chart history from Slate magazine about the hits from coast to coast. I'm Chris Melanfic, chart analyst, pop critic and writer of Slate's why Is this Song Number One? Series. On today's show. 55 years ago this summer, in late June 1964, the number one song on Billboard's Hot 100 was a Lennon McCartney composition. But the song wasn't by the Beatles. It was a song penned by Paul McCartney and recorded by a previously unknown British duo, one of whom was Paul's would be brother in law.
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Please lock me and don't allow the day here inside.
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A little over a Decade later, in January 1975, the top song in America was by a superstar who had an affinity for large glasses and feather boas. This superstar happened to be very good friends with former Beatle John Lennon. And the Lennon McCartney song that he took to number one was a song that his new pal John had written eight years earlier. Six more years after that, in June 1981, the Hot 100's number one song also sported Lennon McCartney songwriting credits. Only neither man had anything to do with this hit. It was a disco medley of COVID songs by a collection of Dutch studio musicians who were trying to sound like the Beatles. Believe it or not, these three singles are the only non Beatles Lennon McCartney compositions ever to top the Billboard Hot 100. The fact that all three are curios, even the one by Elton John, is a bit quirky, tells us something about the singular place the Fab Four's catalog holds in the public imagination. A lot of musicians cover the Beatles, but it is very hard to top the Beatles. Even in 2019, we are still pondering this conundrum in movie theaters this summer, the Danny Boyle Richard Curtis film Yesterday presents a parallel universe in which the Beatles never existed and yet their songs can still move millions of people.
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Now it looks as though they're here to say, oh, I believe in yesterday.
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Why did you write that?
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I didn't write it. Paul McCartney wrote it. The Beatles who?
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But we don't need a fantastical film premise to consider a world where songs by John Lennon and Paul McCartney but not performed by the Beatles topped the charts on the actual Hot 100. Truth is much stranger than fiction. For a cover song to dominate the hit parade, it isn't enough that the original song is written. The song and the artist have to catch the zeitgeist at a very specific cultural moment. Whether It's a moment when the original group is busy. A moment when two superstars are sharing a public bromance. Or a moment when the world is mourning a pretty profound artistic loss. Today on Hit Parade, we will consider the real moments when America was without the Beatles. One song each from the 60s, the 70s and the 80s that benefited from Lennon McCartney's songwriting prowess. But not not the performances of the Fab Four. Each hit's success was more about the moment than about the song itself. The alchemy that makes a song a number one hit is always somewhat fluky, but when it comes to Lennon McCartney songs, it's really fluky. And that's where your hit parade marches today. Three different weeks on the charts. First, the week ending June 27, 1964, when Peter and Gordon were number one with a world without love.
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I don't care what they say I won't stay In a world without love.
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Then the week ending January 4, 1975, when Elton John took over the top spot with Lucy in the sky with Diamonds.
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Here on the show, waiting to take you away.
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Finally, and strangest of all, the week ending June 20, 1981, when a bizarre disco medley of mostly Beatles songs by a group calling itself Starz on 45 went to number one and kicked off a medley craze that would infiltrate the hit parade for months to come.
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Yes, I'm gonna be a star.
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Before I probe these three strange records, let's take a moment to marvel that none of these three chart toppers is a cover of the song Yesterday.
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Oh, yesterday came suddenly.
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The Guinness Book of World Records at one time claimed that this song held the global record for most cover versions of any song with somewhere between 1500 and 2200 covers. By the way, this Guinness record has since been disputed as George Gershwin's ballad Summertime from the musical Porgy and Bess has been covered between 25 and 30,000 times. Anyway, yesterday is surely the most covered Beatles song. It was written and performed entirely by Paul McCartney, backed only by a string section and without the other three Beatles. This, by the way, serves as a handy reminder of just what we mean when we use the term Lennon McCartney. Despite the absence of John Lennon and the other two Beatles, yesterday, like all songs written by either John or Paul in the 1960s, was published under the songwriting entity Lennon McCartney. As has been well chronicled, while John and Paul started as a nose to nose songwriting duo, by the time of the Beatles success, the two men mostly wrote alone and would only occasionally add a bridge or a lyric to what was primarily the other songwriter's composition. Despite Guinness apocryphal Yesterday record and the inarguable number of covers it has spawned, the song's history on the Hot 100 is remarkably scant. Two years after the Beatles single topped the Hot 100, Ray Charles 1967 version of Yesterday reached a modest number 25 on the pop chart. The same week it peaked at number nine on the R and B chart.
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Such an easy game to play as it was now I need a place to hide away oh, I believe yesterday.
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Amazingly, this cover by Charles remains the only version of Yesterday, besides the Beatles own, to successfully breach the US top 40. Only one other cover of the song came close to appearing on the Hot 100. In 1992, R&B girl group En Vogue released their cover of Yesterday. Because it was an album cut, it wasn't allowed on the Hot 100 due to the chart rules at the time, but it did receive some radio airplay. It reached number 73 on Billboard's pop radio chart and number 29 on the R and B radio chart. Of course, recording artists have taken on many other Lennon McCartney songs. A half dozen Beatles songs have been turned into top 10 or top 20 hits by other acts. Some were on the charts while the Fab Four were still together, including you've Got to hide your love away, which was taken to number 10 by the English folk group the Silky in 1965.
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Hey, you've got to hide your way.
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Or the floor fool on the Hill by Sergio Mendez and Brazil 66, which reached number six in 1968. And in 1969, the Queen of Soul, Aretha Franklin took her fiery reimagining of Eleanor rigby to number five on Billboard's R&B chart and number 17 on the Hot 100. After the Beatles were broken up, Motown legend Stevie Wonder took We Can Work it out to number three on the R B chart and number 13 on the Hot 100 in 1971.
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We can work it out. Life is very short.
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Canadian songstress Ann Murray took you Won't See me to number eight on the pop chart in 1974.
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I don't know why you should want to hide.
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R and B supergroup Earth, Wind and Fire took Got to Get yout Into My Life to number nine in 1978. And in the 80s, teen pop star Tiffany flipped the gender on the Beatles classic I Saw Her Standing There. Tiffany's version of I Saw Him Standing there reached number seven in 1988. Notice that most of these cover songs were not big Beatles hits in the first place. Perhaps it's silly to claim there's any such thing as a little known Beatles song, but Lennon McCartney tracks like you've Got to Hide youe Love Away or your Won't See Me are closer to deep cuts. When the Silky or Ann Murray took these songs on, they knew they weren't competing with an original Beatles smash. Nobody took a cover of a song as big as yesterday into the pop top 10. The fact is, given the Beatles enormous popularity and their self contained songwriting and meticulous production, John Lennon and Paul McCartney posed a challenge for song interpreters. Once the Fab Four had laid down their George Martin produced carefully crafted versions, other artists approached these songs at their peril. Literally thousands of artists have covered the Beatles, but when it comes to the charts, the public has shown time and again that it is choosy about Beatles covers. Which might help explain why the only three Lennon McCartney covers to reach number one are such oddball curiosities, very specific to their place in time. Let's take them in chronological order. First, let's travel to the spring of 1964 and meet the luckiest unknown pop duo in all of England who were about to record a smash. And Peter and Gordon's number one song wasn't technically a Beatles cover. It was a Fab Four reject. In 1964, the year the British invasion kicked off in America, seven Lennon McCartney songs topped the Hot 100. Six of these songs were by the Beatles from I Want to hold you'd hand. To I feel fine. But the seventh of these songs went to number one right near the midpoint of the year. And it was by a British duo, Peter Asher and Gordon Waller, who just turned 20 and 19 respectively in June of 64 and had never had a hit before. How did these two earnest, bookish lads wind up in possession of an unrecorded unreleased Lennon McCartney song in 1964? Well, as with all things show business related, it never hurts to have connections. One year earlier, In April of 1963, the Beatles played a BBC live broadcast at the Royal Albert Hall. There, the Liverpool group met a 17 year old London actress named Jane Asher. Jane had appeared in movies as early as five years old and by the early 60s was a regular on BBC TV's music program Jukebox Jury. Within days, Paul McCartney and Jane Asher began dating, kicking off a courtship that would last five years. This was fortuitous timing for Jane's bespectacled older brother, Peter Asher. Like his sister, Peter had been a child actor in the 1950s. But around 1963, as Beatlemania gripped England, Peter formed a pop duo, Peter and Gordon, with his Scottish schoolmate, Gordon Waller.
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If you miss this train I'm on you will know that I have gone. You can hear the whistle blow 100 miles.
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Just as Peter and Gordon were getting their act off the ground, Paul McCartney not only began dating Peter's sister, but even living in the Ashers house, Jane's and Peter's parents were so taken with Paul, they invited the Beatle to treat their upstairs bedroom as his home in London. For the next several years, McCartney spent the mid-60s as de facto extended family to the Asher. And his relationship to Peter, as chronicled in several Beatles biographies, was brotherly even before Paul and Jane became engaged. While Paul infamously never married Jane, she finally broke it off in 1968, not long before he married Linda Eastman. From the start, McCartney's close relationship with the Ashers was very helpful to Peter. While living in their house, Paul wrote several songs. For example, he reportedly wrote the song Yesterday while staying there. But not all of the new songs Paul wrote or played in the Asher house were destined for the Beatles. A World Without Love was a song McCartney wrote by himself as a teenager. It was deemed unworthy of the Beatles. John Lennon in particular, didn't care for it, and the song was even rejected by fellow Liverpool musician Billy J. Kramer. But Peter and Gordon, they needed the material.
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Please lock me away and don't allow the day Here inside where I hide with my loneliness.
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After signing a contract with EMI around the start of 1964, Peter and Gordon were asked by their new label if they had any original songs. Asher asked McCartney if he and Waller could have A World Without Love. Paul even finished writing the song for him, finally adding its missing bridge. And Peter and Gordon brought it to producer Norman Newell, who openly emulated the then hot Liverpool or Mersey sound.
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So I wait and in a while I will see my true love smile she may come, I know not when when she does I know so, baby, until then lock me away.
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Even for those hearing the song for the first time in 1964, a world without Love sounded instantly familiar. The chiming guitars and dewy vocal harmonies read as an unabashed Fab Four pastiche. One of the clever touches that Peter Gordon and producer Norman Newell added to the song was a Hammond organ bridge, a sound that the Beatles themselves would use that same year on their own track, Mr. Moonlight. Even though John Lennon had nothing to do with A World Without Love, as per his and Paul's ongoing agreement. The songwriting credits read. Lennon McCartney. Pop critic and chart columnist Tom Ewing, who blogs about UK no.1 hits for his site Populist, calls A World Without Love quote, a glimpse at a world where the Beatles didn't make the step up from national to global pop phenomenon. Instead, they pursue a profitable sideline and afterlife as a superior pop songwriting team. It is as if Paul McCartney, like a mass market artist, has put his signature on an authorized Fab Four replica. As the song ends, you can practically envision Peter Asher and Gordon Waller taking a deep Beatles like bow. But as uncanny a facsimile as A World Without Love was the songwriting of Paul McCartney and the sound of the Beatles. The didn't guarantee Peter and Gordon a number one hit. They also had great timing. That's because World happened to catch Beatlemania during a brief interlude when the band itself had no product.
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Tell me, how did you find America? Turn left to Greenland. Has success changed your life? Yes, I'd like to keep Britain tidy. Are you a mod or a rocker? Um, no, I'm a mocker.
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Shooting A Hard Day's Night kept the Beatles out of the studio for most of the spring of 1964, at the very moment Beatlemania was cresting. After dominating the Hot 100 for all of February, March and April, their many singles finally began slipping. By mid June, there were only three Beatles hits left on the entire Hot 100. This is when Peter and Gordon's single entered the top 10, and to borrow a term from economics, filled a market gap. A World Without Love reached number one the last week of June 1964. It spent a total of eight weeks in the top ten, satiating a Beatles hungry public while the Beatles themselves were finishing A Hard Day's Night. Then dutifully, Peter and Gordon passed the baton back to the Fab Four as World dropped out of the top 10 from number eight to number 22. Debuting right next to it at number 21 was the Beatles title track from their new film. By early August, as A Hard Day's Night shot to number one, A World Without Love had fallen off the chart entirely. Mind you, this was far from the end of Peter and Gordon's hit making career. Peter Asher still had access to Paul McCartney, songwriter. Before 1964 was over, Peter and Gordon returned to the top 20 with two more songs written by McCartney. The number 12 hit Nobody I Know and the number 20 hit I Don't want to see you Again, both of which were similarly Beatlesque. Peter and Gordon eventually scored hits by other songwriters and including top 10 hits in 1965 and 1966 before they finally disbanded in 1968. The same year Paul McCartney and Jane Asher broke up. But Peter's relationship with the Beatles continued. When the group formed its Apple Records label that year, Peter Asher was named head of Artists and Repertoire or A and R, and he recruited a young James Taylor to Apple that same year.
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There's something in the way she moves but looks my way or calls my name that seems to leave this troubled world behind.
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By the 70s, Asher left Apple Records to become Taylor's manager and eventually a Grammy winning producer for a raft of platinum soft rock stars in the 70s and 80s, including Bonnie Raitt, 10,000 Maniacs and Linda Ronstadt. As long as we're in the 70s, let's turn to the second of our three non Beatles Lennon McCartney number ones. For Peter and Gordon, topping the charts was all about leveraging their connections at the best possible moment, a breakthrough that they parlayed into a decent career. Our 70s chart topper, by contrast, had already been topping the charts on his own. In fact, he'd been utterly dominating the Hot 100 for most of the early 70s. But that doesn't mean Elton John didn't take advantage of, well, Forgive Me A Little Help from his friends. While Peter and Gordon's hit had been a Paul McCartney composition and a leftover, Lucy in the sky with Diamonds was a song largely written by John Lennon, and Lucy was far from a leftover over. It was a track from Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band, the 1967 Beatles LP that changed the way albums were perceived culturally and marketed by the music industry. Famously, the Sergeant Pepper album had no singles issued from it in 1967, and hence no chart hits. Infamously, Lucy in the sky with Diamonds was the song from Pepper that Beatle fans swore and the Beatles themselves spent years denying was about an acid trip, given its LSD initials. In any case, Elton John's cover of Lucy would be the first hit version, although it was not the first cover, given the unintentionally hilarious 1968 version by Star Trek's William Shatner.
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Somebody calls you, you answer Quite slowly a girl was colliding Kaleidoscope eyes cellophane flowers.
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But what Elton's Lucy had in common with Peter and Gordon's fluke chart topper was that it didn't matter what they knew so much as whom they knew. Elton John met John Lennon at a great time for Elton's career, and a strange moment for Lennon. It was A period that Lennon later called his lost weekend. A debauched 18 months from late 1973 to early 1975, in which he was estranged from wife Yoko Ono and drinking and drugging his way through Los Angeles.
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Lately you've been, according to the press, kind of freaking out. Was that a reaction to anything in your personal life? It was. It was personal. And the immigration, which is all personal, you know, it just. It just got down to, you know, get hanging around with the boys and getting drunk, but because I'm famous, you get it, get in the paper, you know, it was just like working it out that way. But it doesn't really work that way because you wake up after your hangover and you've got to face it Anyway.
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So, mind you, Elton John was no slouch in the debauchery department. But when he and Lennon met up in the summer of 1974, Elton's career was at the aforementioned apex of Hitmak. Lennon, by contrast, had to that date built, oddly, the least commercially successful career of the four solo Beatles. All three of the other Beatles had scored number one singles by 1974. Even Ringo.
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Every time I see your face it reminds me of the places we used to.
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To this point, the solo Lennon had no chart toppers. In case you're wondering, Lennon's classics Instant Karma and Imagine both peaked at number three in America in 1970 and 71, respectively.
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Imagine there's no.
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John Lennon's friendship with Elton John changed his chart fortunes. In the summer and early fall of 1974, Elton and John went into the studio together and recorded singles that would ultimately be issued separately. One hit a piece under each man's name. John Lennon's single came first. Elton played piano and sang harmony vocals on an ebullient track that Lennon had written called Whatever Gets you through the night. Elton was positively convinced that this catchy clapping, party starting single would be Lennon's first solo career chart topper. He was so confident, in fact, that he bet Lennon it would go to number one. And Elton made him promise that if it did, Lennon would have to join Elton on stage in concert that November. Whatever Gets you through the night did indeed become Lennon's first no. 1 single on the Hot 100. And the former Beatle made good on the bet by appearing at an Elton John show at Madison Square garden on Thanksgiving, 1974. By the way, this show, one year before Lennon went on a long recording sabbatical and six years before his assassination, turned out, sadly, to be John Lennon's last live appearance. Even before that show, Lennon had already repaid Elton by helping him record a cover of Lennon's Beatles era composition Lucy in the the sky with Diamonds. Lennon even provided backing vocals and guitar on Lucy under the pseudonym Dr. Winston O Boogie. Again, in its original Beatles incarnation, Lucy had a reputation as a drug anthem. But in Elton's hands, Lucy turns whimsical. It plays off of and boosts Elton's glittery, cuddly Captain Fantastic Persona. You can hear it in the way he overplays the courtliness of Lennon's whimsical lyrics, such as the word marshmallow. Excuse me, marshmallow. Then, more than halfway through the song, there's a head scratching reggae version of the chorus, during which Elton and a very audible John Lennon do some plinky white boy toasting for half a minute. It's a unique concept that further establishes the track as a novel.
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Lucy in the Sky.
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The fact that Elton was at the apex of his imperial phase explains why this Lucy cover even exists. It was a total because I can move. Elton's bromance with John Lennon was a kind of Good Housekeeping seal of approval on his cover of Lucy. And it worked. Just seven weeks after John Lennon's Whatever Gets you Through the Night topped the Hot 100, Elton John's Lucy in the sky with Diamonds followed it to the pinnacle in early January 1975. But for a number one hit, Lucy had a remarkably quick burn on the charts. It was on and off the Hot 100 in just 14 weeks, barely three months. Perhaps it had something to do with how prolific Elton was during this period. Lucy was issued as a non album single, and it was followed immediately by another one off number one hit, the smash Philadelphia Freedom.
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Philadelphia.
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Philadelphia Freedom spent 21 weeks on the hot 100 months longer than Lucy. Today, Nielsen Music reports that Philadelphia Freedom is played about six times as frequently on oldies radio as Lucy in the sky with diamonds, its twin 1975 chart topper. But of course, Lucy was mostly a reflection of a megastar's own mega stardom in a career that had already produced such campy hits as Crocodile Rock and Benny and the Jets. ELTON John's Lennon McCartney cover may have been amazingly his kitschiest hit of all, even though it had an actual Beatle playing on it. Six years later, after the death of that Beatle, Elton gave his friend a more somber, elegiac tribute with his 1981 hit Empty Garden.
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Can't you come out to play.
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Now that we've arrived in 1981 there's one last chart topper. We have to discuss the true outlier among this collection of Lennon McCartney outliers. And where do I begin with everything that's strange about the stars on 45.
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Keeps on turning in your mind like we can work it out. Remember Twister Shout, you'll still not tell me why and don't reply.
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Let's start with this wacky song's twisted backstory. And it starts not in 1981 but but in 1970 when this other song, completely unrelated to Lennon or McCartney, topped the charts.
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She's got it yeah baby, she's got it well I'm your Venus I'm your.
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Fire at your desire the Shocking Blues Venus was a smash world, including here in America, where it reached number one on the Hot 100. By the way, a brief aside, this song is so catchy it's hit number one here more than once. My fellow Generation Xers may have fond memories of the Banana Rama version, which reached the top of the Hot 100 in 1986. Anyway, back to 1970 and the shocking Blue The Shocking Blue were a Dutch group and the copyright for Venus was owned by a Dutch publishing company called Red Bullet Productions. It was run by a gentleman named Willem van Kuten. Let's flash forward about another decade. Van Kuten was in a record store in the Netherlands sometime around late 1979 when he heard a 12 inch dance single playing. It was not only the end of the 70s, but the final months of Disco's roughly five year dominance over the music business. It was not uncommon at this time for professional DJs to release disco 12 inch singles that blended a slew of current dance hits into one big megamix designed to keep the dance floor thriving. A more popular example of this was the 1976 hit by the Philadelphia trio the Richie Family, who reached the top 20 with their single the Best Disco in Town, a track that strung together snippets of a half dozen prior hits in under three minutes. But unlike the best disco in town, disco megamixes weren't normally chart hits. Much more often they were white label gray market 12 inch mixes produced by DJs for DJs. And like the mixtapes that rappers would release decades later with uncleared samples, these underground disco 12 inch megamixes featured songs the DJs borrowed without authorization. This is what Van Kuten noticed when he heard this particular 12 inch. It was called let's Do it in the 80s Great Hits, a title that could only have been conceived by a non English speaker. It was credited to the artist Passion on a record label called Alto, but it was basically a bootleg. In fact, the 12 inch was the handiwork of Michel Gendron and Paul richer, French Canadian DJs from Montreal who liked splicing together bits of music from different periods and genres. What was remarkable about let's do it in the 80s great hits was that it lurched from very current disco tracks by the likes of the Gap Band or Lips Incorporated to songs that were at least a decade old, all mixed over a clapping beat. One of those older songs in the mix was the shocking Blues Venus. Gendreau and Richer mashed it up with the Archies 1969 hit Sugar Sugar, and Van Kooten, who owned the copyright to Venus, knew that he hadn't cleared it. The unauthorized use of the shocking blue wasn't even the most brazen thing about the Montreal 12 inch. In its boldest move, right after the Archies, the track switched gears to a long string of Beatles songs. And again, these were all original recordings, totally uncleared. The Beatles medley kicked off with no Reply and I'll Be Back. Interesting. Not songs that had been hits in the 60s or were even all that danceable. And then DJs Gendreau and Richer just kept going with the Beatles hits, Drive My Car. Do you want to know a secret? We can work it out. I should have known better. Nowhere man and you're going to lose that girl. For his part, Van Kuten was more charmed than angered by the unlicensed Montreal 12 inch record. And he was also inspired, particularly by the long Beatles medley In the middle of the Record. He decided that rather than seeking to stamp out the 12 inch, he would make it legit by recreating it as an authorized medley, using soundalike artists to replicate the original hits. It was a novel, perhaps crazy idea, but vankutten knew that he would not need permission to license the Beatles recordings. Covers of songs require only the payment of publishing fees. So vankutten contacted a colleague whom he thought could produce the soundalike record, Jaop Egermont. A veteran of the Dutch recording industry, Eggermont had played drums with the well known Dutch band Golden Earring back in the 1960s, when they were still called Golden Earrings. Egremont, in turn, teamed up with musical arranger Mark Martin Duser, and together they recruited a group of established Dutch singers, all of them in current Dutch bands. These singers, impersonations of the Fab Four, were not precise, but fairly respectable. Bach Mize of the pop group Smile did a pretty good John Lennon impression. Sandy coast frontman Hans Vermeulen took on the challenge of Paul McCartney's vocals. And Okie Huisdens of the band Rainbow Train was passable as George Harrison Listen.
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Do you want to know a secret? Do you promise not to tell?
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Eggermont's team remade all eight Beatles song segments from the Montreal 12 inch. They were very faithful to the original Megamix. They even threw in small snippets of two non Beatles oldies from the 12 inch, the shocking blues Venus, which of course was what led Willem von Kuten to remake the bootleg in the first place, as well as the Archies Sugar Sugar Sugar. One last thing Egremont borrowed for the track was a fleeting reference to the song Beat the Clock by the quirky British hit making duo Sparks. The tracks that Egremont's team re recorded were then spliced together analog style against an unremittingly chipper clap track. That insidious, infectious clap track dates the song very specifically to 1980. What is amusing about Stars on 45, however, is its unhip homage to 70s style disco. The introduction to the track makes this obvious. It's an original melody that gave the song its Name stars on 45 and it its pidgin English lyrics instruct you to boogie like disco, but it also commands dancers not to forget the oldest. By the way, the lyrics to this intro mention two Beatles song titles, Twist and Shout and Tell Me that never actually appear in the stars on 45 medley. This incongruity is what is most surreal about stars on 45 the way it mashes up late disco era production with all those classic 60s songs. Like its Montreal predecessor, it throws both upbeat and downbeat Beatles songs into the disco blend and purees them into dance music. The record is, well, tacky, but also admirably guileless. Jaap Egermont and Martin Duser wound up creating two versions of Stars on 45. The nearly 10 minute edition replicated most of the original Montreal 12 inch, including snippets of non Beatles songs like Funky Town and Boogie Nights. But after the single made its first appearance in the Netherlands in mid 1980, Dutch DJs began to focus on the 44 minute Beatles segment. In response, Egermont and Dueser came up with a tighter sub 5 minute mix that focused on the Beatles segment and fit on one side of a 45 rpm single. That version topped the Dutch charts in February 1981 before beginning its improbable world conquest. The single hit either number two or number one in England, Australia, Germany, Spain and several other countries before finally seeing release in America. And in our country, it had a unique title. In most parts of the world, the song was released simply as stars on 45 medley, and the artist credit was sometimes Also Starz on 45 or the generic Star sound. But the company issuing the single in the U.S. a subsidiary of major label Atlantic Records called Radio Records, didn't want to take any chances with litigious music publishers in the States. So they issued the record with a 41 word title that listed every song covered by the Dutch team. The result, printed in a compressed font on the label of the 45, read as Medley. Intro Venus, Sugar, sugar no reply I'll be back Drive my car do you want to know a secret? We can work it out I should have known better Nowhere man, you're going to lose that girl stars on 45 this remains the longest title of a hit in Billboard Hot 100 history in any position, let alone number one. Oh yeah, and did I mention it reached the top in America too. 41 word title. And all this seemed utterly improbable, not least because when the song was climbing the Hot 100, the chart was being dominated by this blockbuster hit.
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Blush she Got.
- [51:23]
A
Betty Davis Eyes by Kim K was shaping up as 1981's song of the summer and the top hit of the year. It spent nine weeks at number one. Well, to be exact, it spent five weeks on top and then then another four. In between it was interrupted by this crazy collection of Dutch Beatle imitators. Casey Kasem counted it down and there it is, the new number one song in the USA by the group from Holland. They call themselves Stars on 45 and the new number one song is titled Medley. The full title was too much even for a radio pro like Casem to read on the air. By reaching number one, Starz on 45's medley set a probably unbeatable record for song title length at the top of the chart. For those of you who enjoy Billboard Trivia, the legal 41 word American name of the song was more than four times the length of of 1975's 10 word chart. Topper by BJ Thomas hey, won't you play another somebody done somebody wrong song? Finally, Stars on 45's hit also became the third and to date last single with John Lennon Paul McCartney songwriting credits to top the Hot 100. This is amazing, but it begs the question why? Why this bizarre, catchy, but disjointed record stars on 45 is pure campy Eurodisco and Campy Eurodisco only occasionally caught on in America. Otherwise, Boney M would have had bigger hits here. Not to mention the fact that Stars on 45 reached number one in 1981, two years after Disco's peak, the Mirrorball experience fever pitch of the disco backlash was in full force. How did stars on 45's medley, a song that talks about disco in its opening line, overcome these hurdles? I would credit two cultural phenomena, one global and one specific to America. The first first was the sadder of the two, the death of John Lennon. Lennon's assassination in December 1980 prompted a global outpouring of grief, which at first was appropriately very somber. By 1981, however, the memorials turned more toward wistful, whimsical Beatles nostalgia, even by former Beatles themselves. After Lennon's death, sales for his own music exploded. Double Fantasy, his just issued album with Yoko Ono, shot to number one in America and generated three top 10 singles, the most ever from a Lennon album, Starting Over Woman and Watching the Weeds.
- [55:07]
B
When I say that I'm okay well, they look at me kind of strange Surely you're not happy now you no longer play the game.
- [55:18]
A
The third and last of these three hits, Watching the Wheels, reached its chart peak of number 10 in the spring of 1981, the very same week the Stars on 45's medley also broke into the top 10. In effect, the public was passing the baton from John Lennon himself to other acts that could help them grieve. Stars on 45's medley was, of course, recorded months before Lennon's death. But the fact that the song only took off globally in early 81, a year after its release, can clearly be attributed to the kitschy reinvigoration of Lennon's legacy. Just over a month later, George Harrison began climbing the Hot 100 with all those Years Ago, his breezy, cheeky homage to his late bandmate. The week Harrison's song peaked at number two on the Hot 100, Stars on 45 was still in the top 10. Both singles were embraced in that summer as tributes to Lennon, but only Harrison was an intentional tribute. Then the more US centric reason another fluke of timing 1, 2, 3, 4.
- [56:44]
B
5, 6, 7, 8 again or fuel.
- [56:49]
A
Puzzled by the release of Jane Fonda's 1981 book Workout. By mid-81, the aerobics craze was on the COVID of Time magazine and dominating American culture. Stars on 45, with its clap beat and novel repackaging of a familiar baby boomer hit parade, was the ultimate hit by which a 30 something record buyer could feel the burn. Or a 12 year old record buyer. I myself have junior high school memories of our gym teacher soundtracking our seventh grade workouts to her vinyl copy of Starz on 45. Basically, the song was ahead of the curve on a uniquely American phenomenon. Later in 1981, Olivia Newton John would score her biggest ever hit with physical, which spent 10 weeks at number one on the Hot 100 and was a bigger hit here than in any other country around the world. This one two punch, grief stricken Beatles nostalgia and resonance with the year's biggest US fad proved potent indeed. Stars on 45 proved so popular it even spawned a fad of its own. A medley craze. Proving that the music industry likes nothing better than an idea it can imitate. Over the next 18 months, a flotilla of kitschy medleys hit the charts. Some even imitated stars on 45's relentless clap beat. For example, hooked on clip classics, a medley of well known classical pieces including Flight of the Bumblebee, Rhapsody in Blue and the Marriage of figaro reached number 10 on the Hot 100 and it was issued by, no kidding, London's Royal Philharmonic Orchestra. Indeed, some shockingly respectable artists and and ensembles issued medleys in 1981 and 82, including the estate of the late Elvis Presley, The Beach Boys, who actually reached number 12 on the Hot 100 with their medley, And even the surviving Beatles themselves. Capitol Records issued an official medley of their songs taken from Beatles movies and it too reached number 12.
- [60:06]
B
Hey, you've got to hide your lovely way.
- [60:20]
A
The Beach Boys and Beatles medleys were thrown together fairly quickly to capitalize on a fad. Unlike the stars on 45, they lacked any kind of unified beat, so their song to song juxtapositions were more awkward and jarring. They actually made stars on 45's chintzy sounding clap beat seem a bit more deft. And then there was Mecco, the disco arranger and composer behind the chart topping 1977 disco version of the Star wars theme. Even Mecho made a comeback thanks to the medley craze with Pop Goes the Movies, a 1982 medley of other random film themes from the Magnificent Seven to Goldfinger. It cracked the top 40 at number 35. As for the stars on 45 themselves, they they actually came back to the top 40 too. Stars on 45 3, a medley of Stevie Wonder covers, reached number 28 in the spring of 1982, almost a year after their world beating Beatles medley.
- [61:55]
B
Amar Lovely as a summer day.
- [62:00]
A
By the summer of 82 follow up Medleys by both Mecco and the Starzon 45 missed the Hot 100 and it was clear the medley craze was done. However, by scoring at least one follow up hit, Stars on 45 had ensured they would not go down in history as a one hit wonder, and they had the songwriting of John Lennon, Paul McCartney and later Steven Stevie Wonder to thank for it all. Three of the Lennon McCartney attributed number one hits I've discussed in this episode feel like fads or flukes. As recordings, they defy categorization, but they do offer a small window into the strange alchemy by which songs become hits. If the first three rules of real estate are location, location, location, the first three rules of hit are timing, timing, timing. Peter and Gordon's pleasant Paul McCartney recording found a small window when the public was starved for a novel simulacrum of the Beatles sound. Elton John's cover of a John Lennon song went all the way to the top. Where other separate Beatles covers fell short because it rode Elton's own cultural tsunami just as it crested. And the stars on 45 producers hit the ultimate timing jackpot in the saddest way possible.
- [63:43]
B
He's a real nowhere man sitting in his nowhere land.
- [63:51]
A
As popular as the Beatles continue to be nearly 50 years after their breakup, there have been remarkably few Lennon McCartney hits since 1981. The aforementioned Tiffany hit I Saw Him Standing There was the last top 10 cover of a Beatles song, all the way back in 1988. And no, the 2016 number one hit by Ray Shremmerd Black Beatles, fun as it is, isn't a Lennon McCartney song. Actually, you could say there was one more Lennon McCartney cover after the Stars on 45 and Tiffany. It didn't get to number one, but it did reach number six in 1995. And the band that recorded it had the nerve to call themselves the Beatles. That would be the trio of Paul McCartney, George Harrison and Ringo Starr, who reunited for the 1995 ABC TV documentary series the Beatles Anthology. In honor of the occasion, the surviving trio took leftover solo records recordings by the late John Lennon and recorded new vocals and instrumentation on top of them. While the Anthology project generated a trio of chart topping multi platinum albums, the two new singles that were released from those LPs charted much more modest. Free as a Bird was breathlessly awaited, but after it peaked at number six, it fell out of the top 10 rather quickly. The follow up, Real Love just missed the top 10, peaking at number 11 in 1996. Radio airplay for both Beatles reunion singles was modest, and their Hot 100 appearances were fueled largely by sales to rabid Beatle fans. The public still loved the Beatles and their classic albums, but they were less interested in reanimated Beatle recordings. Perhaps this was as it should be. For a quarter century, the Beatles inimitable recorded legacy had frustrated generations of ambitious song interpreters. In the end, even the Beatles themselves couldn't top it. I hope you enjoyed this episode of Hit Parade. My producer this month is Benjamin Frisch, and we had help this episode from Danielle Hewitt. The managing producer of Slate Podcasts is June Thomas, and Gabriel Roth is the Editorial director of Slate Podcasts. Check out their roster of shows@slate.com podcasts. You can subscribe to Hit Parade wherever you get your podcasts, in addition to finding it in the Slate Culture Gabfest feed. If you're subscribing on Apple Podcasts, please rate and review us while you're there. It helps other listeners find the show. Thanks for listening and I look forward to leading the Hit Parade back your way. Until then, keep on marching on the one. I'm Chris Melancholy.
- [67:41]
B
Sam.