Behind every great song is a great songwriter. With many hits, however, the song is much better-known than the songwriter. For example, who is Don Schlitz? He wrote Kenny Rogers’ “The Gambler,” a 1978 hit that’s had lasting power.
Other times, you might have a familiar voice, such as Ben E. King’s, singing his own work, as he did on “Stand By Me.”
Both writers, and several more, will be honored June 14 by the Songwriters Hall of Fame, in a ceremony at the Marriott Marquis in Midtown. For the occasion, we asked some of the songwriters to tell us about one of their songs. Not only do they have stories to tell in their songs, but stories about what went on behind the music, as well. Here are their tales.
Don Schlitz
“The Gambler” sung by Kenny Rogers in 1978
Just 23 when he wrote it, Schlitz had moved to Nashville from Durham, NC, to become a songwriter after dropping out of Duke. He worked as a computer operator at Vanderbilt University and wrote in his spare time. “One hot August afternoon in 1976, I was walking to my efficiency apartment, carrying my heavy Gibson LG1 guitar, and I wrote virtually all of it in my head,” Schlitz says. “The walk was about 20 minutes; I got home and typed it all out on my Smith Corona.”
The song would go to No. 1 on the Billboard country chart.
While Schlitz played a little “nickel and dime poker” as a teenager, he says he never gambles now. “First off, do you want to sit down at a poker table and get your song quoted to you? And I’m very bad at it,” he says. (Those lyrics are “You’ve got to know when to hold ’em, know when to fold ’em.”) A couple of years later, Rogers recorded the track. “He moved the chorus up one verse and upped the tempo. “What he did with the song really kicked open the door [to a songwriting career] for me.”
Tom Jones and Harvey Schmidt
“Try To Remember” from “The Fantasticks,” which opened in 1960
In 1959, lyricist Tom Jones, who’s “not that Tom Jones,” was sharing an UWS apartment with composer Schmidt. They had been working on a musical called “Joy Comes to Deadhorse,” which became “The Fantasticks.”
Schmidt was renting a studio in the Steinway building on 57th Street so he could use the baby-grand pianos. “I was pretending to be Leonard Bernstein,” says Schmidt. But the music didn’t sound like him. “I decided to play something cool and simple, and what became ‘Try To Remember’ just came out. I had nothing to do with it.” He played it for Jones, who wanted to use it in the show.
“I had a cousin in the Coast Guard stationed on Staten Island. He and his wife would invite me out, so I wrote a good deal of the lyrics on the ferry.”
Jim Steinman
“Paradise by the Dashboard Light” released by Meat Loaf in 1977
Jim Steinman wrote all the songs for Meat Loaf’s “Bat Out of Hell” record. “A lot of that was me wanting to write the ultimate something song, and ‘Paradise’ was the ultimate sex-in-the-car song.”
Steinman, a New Yorker who was living on the Upper West Side when he wrote the tune in 1975, didn’t have a car and doesn’t drive.
Thinking of songs such as “Leader of the Pack” and “Tell Laura I Love Her,” Steinman wanted the sexual element “to be in the forefront.”
The best-known part of the song is Yankee announcer Phil Rizzuto’s game call — with the runner rounding first,
heading for second, etc. — which coincided with the boy and girl in the song negotiating sex.
“I’m a baseball fanatic, and I just came up with the idea of using a play-by-play for the sexual part,” says Steinman.
“Rizzuto had no idea the song was about sex. In the studio, he kept asking what it was about, but we wouldn’t tell him,” says Steinman.
When Steinman and Meat Loaf ran into Rizzuto at Yankee Stadium a few years later, Rizzuto, who had discovered the lyrics’ true meaning, called them his signature “huckleberries.” He told the musicians that “they got him in trouble with the nuns.”
Ben E. King
“Stand By Me” (being awarded Towering Song and Towering Performance honors), released by King in 1961. It climbed to No. 4 on the Billboard Hot 100 chart.
Ben E. King, who also sang with the Drifters, wrote this one in his fifth-floor walk-up at 115th Street and Eighth Avenue.
“It started off with me being a big fan of Sam Cooke’s,” says King. “When Cooke was with the Soul Stirrers, they had a song called ‘Lord, Stand By Me.’ I just took the ‘Stand By Me’ part and started writing from there.
“My wife, Betty, and I were newly married. We started off with a love beam,” he says. Writing in his bedroom on a scrap of paper, King strummed away on a “cheap guitar” as he worked. It just took one night.
“I first heard it on the radio walking down a street in Harlem, coming out from a store radio,” he says. “It was one of those moments where you want to tell everybody, ‘That’s my record,’ but you’re too embarrassed.”
When the song had a revival with the film of the same name in 1986, King got a call from producer Norman Lear inviting him to a New York premiere, but the songwriter thought it was a prank. He was later persuaded it was really Lear and took his wife to the movie.
Gordon Lightfoot
“Canadian Railroad Trilogy,” released by Lightfoot in 1967
“It was Canada’s 100th birthday in 1967, and I was commissioned to write it by the CBC,” says Canada native Gordon Lightfoot. At 25, he had already done another railroad song for a documentary.
“They wanted a song about the completion of the transcontinental railroad across Canada and directed me to the library to get a book on the architect of the railroad, Sir William Cornelius Van Horne.”
Done in a week, the CBC liked the song and had him perform on a two-hour TV special on New Year’s Day with a 16-piece orchestra.
“It was one of the great thrills of my life,” he says, adding, “I was always into that sort of thing — railroads, earth movers, large trucks — because I came from a very small town, Orillia, 80 miles north of Toronto.”
Bob Seger
“Night Moves,” released by Seger in 1976. It reached No. 4 on the Billboard Hot 100 chart.
“Everything in ‘Night Moves’ is true,” Bob Seger told the UK magazine Uncut. “We did have those parties called gassers. A buddy of mine had an upside-down record player in his glove box, and we’d all bring our records and play them on his car battery and dance by the light of the cars.”
Bette Midler
Writing songs can be a solitary affair, but once a tune is finished, the songwriter needs a lot of help. Cue the great singers, such as Bette Midler. The Divine Miss M is also being honored by the Songwriters Hall of Fame, with the Sammy Cahn Lifetime Achievement Award. Midler’s come a long way since bursting onto the scene with a Best New Artist Grammy in 1973.