Month: March 2019

Lionel Richie sings the Commodores hit “Brick House” Saturday, March 23, 2019, at the Hard Rock in Atlantic City.
(Photo by Mike Morsch)

There was a moment in the Lionel Richie concert Saturday night at the Hard Rock in Atlantic City, just as Lionel was finishing up the final verse of “Endless Love,” where there was a bit of a commotion in the front row.

A gent had gotten down on one knee and proposed to his girlfriend while Lionel was singing the song. Now that’s some pretty romantic and memorable planning by that dude, and it didn’t go unnoticed by Lionel. After he finished the song, he stopped the show and made a big deal out of the moment, the happy couple was shown on the big concert screens, and it all seemed unscripted to me from my vantage point. Lionel seemed to not know about the proposal in advance and veteran performer that he is, he rolled it right into the show.

He dedicated the next song to the woman who had just received the rock, which was the 1977 Commodores hit “Brick House.” It’s a great song, and the story behind it was detailed for me by William A. King of the Commodores for “The Vinyl Dialogues Volume III: Stacks of Wax.”

By the mid-1970s, the Commodores had developed a routine for recording albums. Band members would get together in the middle of October and spend about two months choosing and arranging songs, take a couple of weeks off for Christmas, fly to Motown Records in Los Angeles and spend January and February recording, release the album in the spring and tour in support of the album in the summer.

When the band — William A. King, Ronald LaPread, Thomas McClary, Walter Orange, Lionel Richie and Milan Williams — was getting together songs for its fifth studio album, the self-titled “Commodores” in late 1976, members had chosen and arranged eight songs for the album. They needed one more, though.

But everybody was worn out.

“We had done eight songs and we could not choose the ninth song. Everybody was desperate, everybody was tired, didn’t want to see each other anymore, wanted to go home. We had seen each other every day, seven days a week, for two months,” said William A. King, band’s trumpet player. “We decided to just do something quick, because we only had two days left to get the songs prepared before we left for L.A.”

They all agreed to just throw something together quickly. So Walter Orange sat down at the drum kit and started tapping out a beat. Ronald LaPread added the bass, while King and Richie tried to figure out the horns part to go with it. Thomas McClary added in guitar and Milan Williams joined in on keyboards.

“We were just jamming,” said King. “And we finally got a basic track down.”

There were no lyrics to the riff, so it was suggested that King and Orange both head home after the session and try to write some words to go with it. But time was of the essence. The band needed the lyrics the next day if it was going to complete the ninth song for the album before heading to Los Angeles to record.

“At that time we had cassette tapes, so I was playing it over and over and over again. I was just trying to figure out a starting point,” said King. “But I knew it was going to be about a woman.”

But even after getting home that evening and playing the cassette over and over, King was still stuck. It was getting late, and King’s wife, Shirley Hanna-King, was running out of patience.

“She said, ‘Look, why don’t you turn that tape off? You’ve played it a thousand times; don’t you have that melody in your head yet?’” King recalled his wife saying. “I said, ‘No, I don’t, which is why I keep playing it over and over again.’”

But Shirley Hanna-King had heard enough and retired to a different part of the house where she didn’t have to listen to the tape.

Eventually, King himself ran out of steam.

“I fell asleep, literally with the tape on. It just ran out,” said King. “When I woke up, I had a pad of paper and pencil on my chest. I looked at it and it had all these lyrics written on it. I was looking at it thinking, ‘God, those are some good lyrics.’ And then I looked at the handwriting and it was my wife’s handwriting. So I asked her, “Did you write this?’ And she said,

‘Yeah, I had to do something to keep you from playing that tape all night long because we couldn’t get any sleep.’”

King took the lyrics to the next day’s session and presented them to the Commodores.

“Milan Williams said, ‘Man, these are the best lyrics you’ve ever written,’” said King.

Orange had also done some writing the previous evening, and between the two of them, King and Orange combined their lyrics and came up with a song that would be about a woman who was built like “a brick shithouse.”

The song was “Brick House.” But James Carmichael, who was producing the “Commodores” album, still wasn’t sold on it being the ninth and final song for the record.

“Carmichael wasn’t convinced,” said King. “He listened to it and said, ‘Eh, I’m not too sure about this song.’”

But Orange was. So unbeknownst to the other members of the group, he took the assistant engineer into an adjacent studio, had the track put on and then Orange started singing over the track, adding in the lead vocals. He then took the revised track back to Carmichael and the Commodores to hear the results.

“And everybody went, ‘Oh my God, this is really nice.’ That’s actually how the song got on the album, because Walter went in there and did a demo vocal over it, which convinced everybody that the song was worth going on the album,” said King. “It probably would not have even made it onto the album. We would have just done one fewer song on the record.”

“Brick House” would go to No. 5 on the U.S. Billboard Hot 100 singles chart and No. 4 on the U.S. R&B chart in 1977.
(Photo by Mike Morsch)

“Brick House” would be released as a single and go to No. 5 on the U.S. Billboard Hot 100 singles chart and No. 4 on the U.S. R&B chart.

But it wouldn’t be the only hit single from the “Commodores” album, which was released on March 30, 1977. There would be another single that was even bigger.

Richie had a song that, according to King, he must have rewritten a dozen times once the band had gotten to Los Angeles to record. Richie would go into the bathroom at Motown Records, write the lyrics and bring them back out to the band.

“Either Carmichael or one of the guys would go, ‘Eh, these suck.’ And Lionel would go back into the bathroom,” said King. “We had this thing we used to say: ‘Has anybody seen Richie? Oh, he’s in the bathroom.’ The lyrics for that song were written in the bathroom at Motown Studios in Los Angeles.”

The song was “Easy,” and it would be a smash hit. It got to No. 1 on the U.S. Billboard R&B chart and No. 4 on the U.S. Billboard Hot 100 singles chart.

“Even though we hated his first lyrics, ‘Easy’ was easy,” said King. “From the first time he played it, I thought it was a hit song. And I wasn’t alone. I think everybody in the room thought it was a hit song.”

The “Commodores” album itself was also a big hit for the group. It reached No. 1 on the U.S. R&B/Hip-Hop albums chart and No. 3 on the U.S. Billboard 200 albums chart.

If you get a chance to see Lionel Richie, buy the ticket. Richie is still in fine voice, he’s a fabulous entertainer and it’s an evening of hit after hit after hit.

Mike and Micky: The Monkees are still magnificent

By Mike Morsch

On March 17, 2019

In The Vinyl Dialogues Book

Mickey Dolenz belts out a tune at “The Mike and Micky Show” March 6, 2019, at the Keswick Theatre in Glenside, PA.
(Photo by Mike Morsch)

It was early 1967 The Monkees were frustrated. Sure, they had a successful television show — wildly more successful than anybody could have imagined at the time — and their first two albums, “The Monkees” and “More of the Monkees,” had reached No. 1 on the U.S. Billboard Hot 200 Albums chart.

But The Monkees — Mike Nesmith, Micky Dolenz, Peter Tork and Davy Jones — weren’t being taken seriously as musicians and songwriters. And that was beginning to wear on them heavily.

So when it came time to make the third album, they went on strike, which was spearheaded by Nesmith.

“Mike had become very frustrated, and I don’t blame him because he had bought into this whole thing (The Monkees),” said Dolenz in a July 11, 2017, interview with The Vinyl Dialogues. “He was a singer-songwriter and he came into The Monkees with that in mind. I know he was promised that we’d be doing some of his songs, and that he’d be writing and singing. That didn’t turn out to be the case.”

Dolenz doesn’t believe, more than 50 years later, that there was any nefarious plot by record executives to stifle the artistic creatively and freedom of The Monkees. It’s just that the television show steamrolled so fast and hard and became so instantly successful that the corporations behind it — RCA Victor, NCB Television and Screen Gems — got overwhelmed by the Monkees mania.

“Mike will tell you, even now, that we weren’t capable of doing our own music at first,” said Dolenz. “But the story he’s told me is that he went to the producers early on and he said he had written this song that he wanted to do as a Monkees song, and he played it for them. And they said, ‘No, that’s not a Monkees song.’ And Mike said, ‘Wait a minute, I am one of the Monkees.’ And they said, ‘Yeah, yeah, fine. But it’s not a Monkees song.’”

Mike Nesmith of The Monkees was in fine voice at “The Mike and Micky Show” at the Keswick Theatre.
(Photo by Mike Morsch)

Frustrated but determined, Nesmith decided to give the song to a young female singer who was kicking around the Los Angeles area in the summer of 1967. Her name was Linda Ronstadt and the song was “Different Drum.”

Rondstadt and her band The Stone Poneys released the song in September 1967 and it went to No. 12 on the Cash Box Top 100 Singles chart, No. 13 on the Billboard Hot 100 Singles chart and No. 16 in Record World magazine.

But putting their collective feet down, led by Nesmith, for The Monkees third album, “Headquarters” proved to work.

“Mike got us all on board and said, ‘We can do this if we put our minds to it.’ Mike was the one who encouraged me do some songwriting. Basically, we said we just want something to say about what’s going on with this album,” said Dolenz.

Dolenz believes that fans then didn’t care that the Monkees weren’t playing their own instruments or writing their own songs, although the band members did. The famous Los Angles session musicians The Wrecking Crew had played on The Monkees first two albums, as well as on albums by the Beach Boys, Sonny and Cher, The Mamas and the Papas, the 5th Dimension and Frank Sinatra, so it wasn’t that unusual in the 1960s.

“I asked my wife, who was an original fan in the 1960s at age 8, ‘Honey, did you care at all about whether we played all the instruments and that whole thing?’ And she said, ‘No, you were just cute,’” said Dolenz. “The Beatles didn’t play on every single record. They had people come in all the time. Unfortunately, we’re the ones that kind of got beat up for it, and ironically, we were the ones who didn’t have a choice.”

But the “Headquarters” album would provide some vindication for The Monkees. It was the first album that included substantial songwriting and instrumental performances by members of the group.

Mickey Dolenz on the guitar during “The Mike and Micky Show.”
(Photo by Mike Morsch)

All it did was reach No. 1 on the Billboard 200 Album chart and was certified double-platinum in the United States with sales of more than two million copies within the first two months. Released on May 22, 1967, it stayed at No.1 for just one week — and might have stayed there longer — but the Beatles released “Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band” on May 26, 1967, and that album replaced The Monkees at No.1 and stayed there for 11 weeks, with “Headquarters” right behind in the No. 2 spot for the same number of weeks.

“If you’re going to get blown out of the No. 1 position, I guess Sgt. Pepper is a good one to do that,” said Dolenz.
More than 50 years later, Nesmith and Dolenz, the surviving members of The Monkees — Jones died in 2012 and Tork died in February 2019 — are still proving that they’re the real deal.

“The Mike and Micky Show” at the Keswick Theatre in Glenside, PA, on March 6 left no doubt that the remaining Monkees are as good as they ever were.

Their set included The Monkees hits, songs written by both Nesmith and Dolenz, and several from the “Headquarters” album, including “You Just May Be the One,” “You Told Me” and “Sunny Girlfriend” written by Nesmith; “For Pete’s Sake,” co-written by Tork; “Randy Scouse Git,” written by Dolenz; and “I’ll Spend My Life With You,” written by Tommy Boyce and Bobby Hart.

The show was special not only because Nesmith and Dolenz are great musicians and performers, but because it was just a few weeks after Tork’s death, and it was evident both Dolenz and Nesmith were affected by the loss of Tork. In addition, the show was a rescheduled performance from a June 2018 Keswick Theatre show where Nesmith had collapsed just after soundcheck and needed bypass surgery, from which he appears to be fully recovered.

But through it all, The Monkees put on a great show. It’s obvious the two are comfortable with each other onstage.
Everybody left the theater that evening with a smile on their faces. And rightfully so. The Monkees still got it.

Mike Nesmith and Micky Dolenz of The Monkees have surrounded themselves with a fabulous group of musicians for “The Mike and Micky” shows.
(Photo by Mike Morsch)

Stories behind memorable albums of the 1970s as told by the artists

Month: March 2019

It’s easy to listen to Lionel Richie sing ‘Brick House’ and other hits all night long

Mike and Micky: The Monkees are still magnificent