Great Rock/Country Band & Song Stories

Probably the best story that I ever heard about a song: Willie Nelson was broke and he sold the song, Hello Walls to Faron Young for 500 bucks. Right before he cut it, Faron gave Willie the opportunity to buy the song back, and he did.
The record was a big hit, so Willie made a good bit of money. The next time he saw Faron was at Tootsie's. Willie walked up and kissed him right in the mouth. Faron said later " nobody ever kissed me better than that!"

Hearing how 10cc recorded "I'm Not In Love" was really interesting. Never would have guessed that it was originally going to have a Bossa Nova sound.

The Making of I'm Not in Love

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10cc

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Do you know the story behind their name?

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The real story or the fake one?

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I only know one story. I thought it was the average size of a load.

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Rick Wakeman

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FIFY

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Wild Thing was the #1 song on my birthday. I wasn’t planned so apparently as much thought went into my conception as went into that song.

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It was probably a cool car though, and not a Kia or Subaru.

Wow. That was really cool. Thanks for sharing.

There's a legendary retired venue near St. Louis called "Caveland" that was built in a carved out cave near the Mississippi River. This full-time roller rink featured unknown artist who would later achieve stardom: Bob Seger, Ted Nugent, Charlie Daniels and others.

Here's the story of Caveland as a rock venue ...




Perhaps one of the most remembered things about the cave is the rock concerts that were held there on most weekends. Attendees said that the music was exceptionally loud, however that didn’t dampen their enthusiasm. Ted Nugent & The Amboy Dukes played in the cave in 1974 the night before their appearance at Kiel auditorium in St. Louis. At one point during Nugent’s set, he pointed his guitar at the disco ball and it shattered because of the noise. The opening act for Nugent was a then somewhat unknown musician named Bob Segar who played "Sue Me, Sue You Blues."

The following excerpt credited to Joe Bohnert is a description of a concert experience at the cave…..
*graphic language & situations …..

A band from St. Louis called RUSH was opening the show. The night of the concert came and I had a place close to the front on the floor with some of my friends. Hours passed and the place filled up with people. The stage was empty and there was no music. It was a good couple of hours past when the concert was supposed to start and the crowd was getting edgy.

Suddenly, these big burly bearded biker dudes busted through the (only) door of the place carrying these huge RCA W bass bins and giant double driver (JBL) horns and tromped through the crowd of hypnotized hippies. "Outta the way!" It was the RUSH crew. In minutes, they had the huge sound system set up with a wall of Marshall amplifiers lining the stage with the biggest drum set I'd ever seen. I'd only seen Marshalls in pictures before. The leader / guitarist / vocalist of RUSH was Gene Edlen, a notorious wild man. This was my 1st real concert. They came out playing "Crossroads". It was so loud in that cave and professional and bad arse! I was totally overcome, oversaturated, and freaked out.

They ended Crossroads and broke into one of Gene's songs called "The shite's Comin' Down"...a high
octane boogie that lasted the better part of an hour. During this song, Gene climbed on top of his Marshall
stacks (over 6 feet tall) with his guitar, looked back and saw these fluorescent plastic stars hanging from strings, plucked one and started acting like he was shooting up drugs with it. He built the audience up to such a frenzy that you thought you were rushing off crystal speed with him! Those 2 songs changed my life forever. I knew what I wanted to do. I knew my purpose in life. I was only 15 or 16. MC-5 was good,damn good. But I had been completely blown away by Gene Edlen & RUSH. To this day, nobody remembers many details about the MC-5, but everyone remembers RUSH as the baddest band they'd ever witnessed. After experiencing Gene Edlen & RUSH at Caveland, my whole outlook on life was changed.



Not long after the RUSH - MC5 show, another guitar phenomenon came to the Cave. TED NUGENT & THE AMBOY DUKES. A band called Savage Tenderness was opening the show. They had all new Kustom amplifiers (solid state) and a p.a. system. The Cave was packed. Savage Tenderness played their set, then another act came on that wasn't even advertised. Bob Seger! I'd heard their name before, and they were a pretty good rock & roll band from what I remember. This show was far more organized than the MC-5 show I'd seen there. Nugent had a HUGE wall of amplifiers with deer heads on top of them. 4 stacks of Fenders (a 100 watt twin reverb amp on top of a showman dual 15" cabinet X 4with a 200 watt Marshall stack) and the bass player (Rob Grange) had 2 Sunn Colluseum bass stacks. It
all barely fit on the stage. I was ready! Ted came out playing "Hibernation", a long instrumental with a longfeedback intro.

Let me try to describe the acoustics of this Cave. If you clapped your hands once, it took at least a minute vfor the reverb to die down. If you were by the stage and turned around facing the opposite end, the drum echoes would come back at you over a second later, just as loud as the original sound! Truly impossible acoustics. I skated there a lot while I was growing up and the sound of a cave full of kids with wheels on that concrete floor was mind boggling. You can imagine...well, I guess you really can't...what Nugent or RUSH sounded like in there. My mouth was hanging open. Ted was a real guitar virtuoso back then. Not just the wild & crazy guy like today. He did all the vocals and lots of long instrumental jams. They were working on the stuff for the “Call Of The Wild” album and did several off that album like "Pony Express," "Call Of The Wild", "Cannon Balls" as well as "Papa's Will". It would be a long time till "Stranglehold" would even be dreamed of.

One of the peaks of the show was when Ted shattered a glass ball (8-9" / dia.) with a note of screeching feedback from his guitar. It was a great show and Ted had a good time, too, even though I read interviews with both him and Seger where they described the show as the low point of their careers.

RUSH played there several more times as well and every show was balls to the wall. You never knew
what to expect. Gene would find a fire extinguisher and spray the crowd holding the hose like he was
pissing. Once, at the door where they were taking admission, one of his bearded entourage was asking
the girls as they were digging their money out of their purses, "Got any spare make-up?" During their
break, they got into some donated clothes for the poor that was stashed somewhere in the cave and got a
bunch of dresses and women's clothes. After the break, Gene came out with a goofy dress on and lipstick& make-up all over his face as well as jewelry with his combat boots and long bushy moustache. He was talking in a falsetto voice and said, "Let me introduce you to some of my girlfriends..." He introduced the other members with feminized names (also in drag) then, "And this is Cosmic Starfire." Another guy dressed in drag came out with a microphone and a mile-long cord and they started hammering out a heavy version of some goofy song. There was a big crowd of people standing all the way across the Cave. Cosmo was singing some kinda crazy gobelty asian and dove into the crowd. Everyone spread out.

He started running and diving on girls and guys both, humping 'em like a dog in heat. Then he'd get up
and dive into some other unsuspecting onlookers. Again & again. he climbed back up on the stage &
Gene said, "Cosmo, you've been a bad bad girl!!" It was warped, but heavy. It's all tattooed on my
brain.....

Some of the musicians complained that if you touched the wall with a plugged in electric guitar,
you would get shocked because of the dampness in the cave. Ike & Tina Turner, Bob Kuban
Charlie Daniels, and KXOK radio personality Johnny Rabbit were some of the other groups that
entertained there.

After being in business for over 25 years, Caveland ceased operation as a skating rink and
concert venue in 1985 when Sue Morris retired.

Drunk History: Sunday Morning Coming Down