GROW BIGGER EARS #3: The "Audio Autopsy" Obsessive Power Pop Playlist Vol. 1-It's All About the Wanting
GROW BIGGER EARS #3: The "Audio Autopsy" Obsessive Power Pop Playlist Vol. 1-It's All About the Wanting
Dusty Springfield, The Beatles, Raspberries, Cheap Trick, and the Hoodoo Gurus all line up to give you their want lists.
What used to be a Calvin Klein fragrance is now the third in the Front Row & Backstage recurring Power Pop Playlist series: Obsession!
The five-song GROW BIGGER EARS #3 “Audio Autopsy” Power Pop Playlist-Obsession (approx. 15 minutes):
Our list runs chronologically, as well as thematically progressing, more or less, to more insistent levels of wanting, until #5 when someone (apparently) has left, and our protagonist wants the human object of affection back.
1. Dusty Springfield “I Only Want to Be With You,” 1963, Philips Records (UK)
Written by Mike Hawker and Ivor Raymonde (who also arranged), Dusty released her debut solo single in the UK on November 8, 1963, exactly three weeks before The Beatles released our Playlist’s second “Want” song! Otherwise, the Fab Four would’ve led off the ‘List, as they should any list!
Philips A&R exec at the time, Johnny Franz, produced Dusty’s “I Only Want to Be With You,” which topped out at #4 on the UK singles chart in January 1964.
One day in autumn ‘63 (according to Express.co.uk), lyricist Hawker (who wrote the song shortly after marrying Jean Ryder, his inspiration), received a phone call from Franz.
According to Ryder (and paraphrasing), Franz said, “Look, we need something which is going to put this girl into the charts, because everybody is knocking her, everybody is saying she'll never make it [solo].”
“Have you got a song that’s a guaranteed hit?”
Springfield had already recorded nine solo tracks, none of which was deemed the right song to launch her solo career (after a few years in a couple small groups, late ‘50s-early ‘60s).
With Ryder's permission, Hawker submitted “I Only Want to Be With You” to Franz, having made a demo featuring Ryder singing while keeping the beat by tapping on a biscuit tin lid.
Franz, and then Springfield, approved the song, which Dusty recorded in a late October 1963 session at a London studio. As it happens, Jean Ryder was included as a background vocalist on the session.
The song has been widely covered, over the decades, by over 100 artists in several different languages.
#2. The Beatles, “I Want to Hold Your Hand,” 1963, Parlophone (UK), Capitol Records (US)
There’s nothing I could add that hasn’t already been said, except for my personal experience with this song: Like all Americans sitting in front of their black’n’whites on February 9, 1964 watching The Ed Sullivan Show on CBS-TV, “I Want to Hold Your Hand” was the fifth song (second song in second set, last half of show) I ever heard by The Fab Four.
I was 8…stunned…and, forever changed.
The third and last song in the group’s first Sullivan set was “She Loves You,” which quickly became my favorite of the two songs. In fact, it’s always been in my Top 3 Favorite Songs of All Time, joining “I Get Around” and “Be My Baby” in various positions on different days!
#3. Raspberries, “I Wanna Be With You,” 1972, Capitol Records
For my money, the most heavily-influenced by The Beatles, although Rick Nielsen would likely duke it out that his Cheap Trick was/is. Maybe so, Rick, but to fans, you guys came after Badfinger (whom some may argue fits that bill) and Eric Carmen’s Cleveland quartet. Chronology matters.
From the ‘Berries’ soph set, Fresh (released in November 1972), this was Carmen’s baby all the way: He wrote it and sang lead. This was the debut single off the album, one that became their second greatest US hit, behind “Go All the Way,” released just before this one.
The song reached the Top 40 on three key US charts, including #16 on Billboard’s Hot 100, #10 in Cashbox, and #7 in Record World. It was also #17 in Canada.
This rare completely live performance of “I Wanna Be With You,” not synched to studio recording:
4. Cheap Trick, “I Want You to Want Me” (Live), 1977 studio release; this recording, live at Nippon Budokan (Tokyo), April 1978 (April 1979 US release), Epic/CBS Records
Sounding rather pedestrian, now, on their second album, In Color (released in 1977, and produced by Tom Werman), the revved-up live version is what propelled the lads from Rockford, Illinois into the FM rock stratosphere. Mostly ballads would catapult them into full AM-radio consciousness in the late ‘80s.
In fact, “I Want You to Want Me” was the first single to be released from In Color (September 1977), and it failed to chart in the US. The studio version, topping the Japanese charts as it did, is what led to the ground-breaking, two-night Budokan gig.
The live version of the song was released in April 1979, and became the band’s biggest selling single in the states, reaching #7 on the Billboard Hot 100. In Canada, it reached #2, and remained there for two weeks. It was also the band’s highest charting single in Britain, where it reached #29.
Originally intended to be released only in the country in which it was recorded, Cheap Trick Live at Budokan was released in Japan in early October 1978. I was working in a large Houston record store at the time, and clearly remember getting the album into our import bins that fall.
An avid fan of the band since their February 1977 debut, they actually did an in-store for us (Cactus Records on Shepherd), where I made sure to get my In Color album autographed. I quickly snapped up my Budokan copy, figuring it might never get a domestic release, as I seemed to be gearing up to become a CT completist!
History reflects (and I was living it) that CBS/Japan was reporting massive sales of the album in-country. Along with the heads of Epic/Sony overseas alerting domestic Epic execs of booming sales, it’s quite likely they were making frantic calls, themselves, to large retail record chain units quizzing them on their Budokan import sales!
I clearly recall at least one article in Billboard trumpeting the upcoming release of “the album CBS suits could no longer ignore releasing here,” and February 1979 saw its ultimate US unveiling.
In fact, feeling so bitter about missing the Budokan boat right off the dock (and whiffing on four months of album sales that would’ve fattened their ledger books), Epic suits saw fit to “disguise” the US release as a Japanese import!
As they do in Japan, Epic/CBS, in their cynical wisdom, wrapped a vertical paper band around the album, replete with Japanese characters (and enough crass corporate commercialism to fill a Toyota)! Welcome to our shores, Epic catalog #FE 35795!
5. Hoodoo Gurus “I Want You Back,” 1984, Demon Records (UK)
I was not in on Australia’s Hoodoo Gurus in the ‘80s. It took a ‘90s power pop CD compilation to bring this magnificently frenetic song to my attention. It made me wonder, at the time, how it managed to escape my ears for a dozen years!
It was the fourth and final single from their 1984 debut album, Stoneage Romeos, and was written by Dave Faulkner, the band’s singer/songwriter/guitarist/keyboardist.
Alas, unlike our previous four “want” songs, this “want” song is less about a desire for a loved one, than it is…well, here’s Faulkner in 2007 in Harp Magazine:
The song was written not about a former lover, but about the split with a band member. “Basically,” Faulkner recalled, “when Rod Radalj left the Gurus, he was very dismissive of us, trying to move on and kind of burn everything behind him:
“‘Oh, it’s not worth staying in that band. They’re terrible!’ So I basically turned that emotion around: ‘Here’s this guy who ditched us, and he’s acting like the spurned lover!’ It was me saying, ‘You'll regret it’...Well, yeah, I just turned all that stuff into a relationship song.
“I don’t know why people don't realize that it’s an anger song. You're right, they think it’s a longing song. But, it's not a song about ‘I wish you’d come back,’ but ‘You'll wish you were back!’”
This GROW BIGGER EARS #3 was inspired by Kevin Alexander’s stellar ‘Stack, “On Repeat” and his August 29 Playlist Thread, accessible by clicking the box below! See if you can find which of the above songs was included as one of Kevin’s Playlist songs!
GROW BIGGER EARS #11, with MORE songs about wanting, here:
And I'll also say that I like when you dip into my decade, the 80s....when I do a Cheap Trick or Hoodoos post I'll let you know so we can perhaps do a cross-post.
Excellent mini set list! As a huge cheap trick and hoodoo gurus fan, I was happy to see both in the top of your pops. I actually have a whole story about when I discovered hoodoo gurus that I won’t tell you here because it will likely be a post for Earworms. Suffice it to say, I discovered them at a record store after their first album, and became pretty obsessed. They haven’t made a bad album yet and their most recent a few years ago was better than I expected.  
I actually didn’t know that story about what “I want you back“ was really about! Always more to learn even regarding the bands you think you know everything about!