Options
Neil Sedaka : King of Song : BBC4
Doghouse Riley
Posts: 32,491 Forum Member
✭✭✭
I've always admired Neil Sedaka, a former Julliard student (as was Miles Davis) he was able to write tunes using more than four chords.
The art being foreign to many pop song writers of many eras. I've a couple of 45s of his in one of my jukeboxes, although he wrote a considerable number of hits both for himself and other artists in an "in out in" career covering several decades.
Good programme.
The art being foreign to many pop song writers of many eras. I've a couple of 45s of his in one of my jukeboxes, although he wrote a considerable number of hits both for himself and other artists in an "in out in" career covering several decades.
Good programme.
0
Comments
Yes, a great programme. Might even have to dust of my version of "Solitaire"
Nobody can write songs like Neil does by accident, takes years of study, He has wrote some beautiful songs i have never grown tired of listening too.
Personally, I think he was "of his time" as a performer. A lot of it for some is all about nostalgia.
A man of near seventy-five singing a song in a falsetto voice about a sixteen year-old girl doesn't seem quite right now.
Very likely, he toured the clubs in the UK when he couldn't get work in the UK.
For me it's the technical side of music that a trained musician like Neil writes I appreciate.
It has nothing to do with nostalgia, plenty of songs I liked years ago I knew were technically crap and if they were played now I would still think they are technically crap, I never enjoyed Burt Bacharach when they were released but I knew his music was on a different level to nearly everyone, my tastes have changed over the years and I love a lot of his music.
It takes a lot of studying and hard work for years just to have the tools to begin composing music to their standard.
Nice to see Connie Francis too.
It's actually a repeat. I remember watching it a couple of years ago.
I didn't know his career took a dive in the US and he decamped to the UK for a few years.
The number of hit songs he's had over the years came as a surprise, either himself OR covered by others. Solitaire is a sublime song.
Top Geezer.
What a bummer, your own Ma [ who he was devoted to ]
It's a well known fact that the better songwriters like Rodgers and Hammerstein, Cole Porter etc., (as did Sedaka but not always) and although I've never particularly liked them even Abba, usually start with the tune and then work out the chord structure.
A lot of popular song writers, particular from the fifties, started with a basic chord progression and write the song around it, this is limiting and why many songs sound familiar. In fact if you take the top line away, there are many songs that could be sung to the same "left hand" accompaniment.
This can of course work OK with Blues.
There are several variations of a blues tune's structure;
With passing chords, without passing chords, "round the clock" with a cycle of 4ths and variations on that.
You can go "stratospheric," Miles Davis (another ex-Julliard student) once remarking that, "he could work any chord into any tune."
Yes his mother and her lover an air-conditioning salesman who "managed him" spent all the money from his early hits and made him bankrupt, he then went from scraping a living, earning he said, $30,000 a year, to his first year after his come back, $6,000,000.
You of course, can "double your money" writing, recording and singing your own material.
There is an interesting interview Sedaka gave a few years ago when he went to Israel for a concert. http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3963242,00.html
The whole piece is interesting, but this is about Neil and his mother:
Your mother didn't even want you.
"My mother gave birth to my sister a year and a half earlier. It was a very difficult pregnancy and she almost lost my sister and her life while giving birth. The doctors advised her not to give birth again. They said it would put her life in risk. So my mother tried to miscarry by getting on the roller coaster at the famous Coney Island amusement park again and again."
How did you find out about it?
"What do you mean? She told me about it. I was 12."
Isn't it a little problematic to tell a 12-year-old such a thing?
"No, not at all. We were very good friend. We could talk about everything."
Perhaps that's what made her want you. Being the good son, trying to be the man everyone loves at any cost?
"No, no. Not at all. She had a very bad pregnancy and she almost couldn't give birth again. That's all, that's the whole story."
Over the years she became your manager, while at the same time, at the height of your success, you and your wife lived off a monthly salary of $1,000. You didn't even have a credit card before the age of 32.
"My mother had a lover for 30 years, and my father accepted it. He was very poor and told my mother, 'Honey, if there's someone taking care of you and of all your needs – it's fine with me. As long as you go out to nice restaurants and it doesn't cost me one cent, it's okay. The important thing is that you're happy.'
"She told my sister and me about it when I was 20. She managed me, and not so good it seems, but I was okay with everything until she suggested that her partner manage me. He was an air conditioning systems salesman, and he managed me for four or five years, and it was pretty bad. He had no idea. My career was down. In the end, when I informed them that they were no longer my managers, my mother tried to commit suicide by taking sleeping pills."
And how did you react to that?
"I thought she had lost her senses. She was depressed. And yet, a few months later we all got over it. I never spoke to her lover since then, but they stayed together until he died. My mother was premature. I don't think it would be odd today for a man or woman to have a mistress or lover."
Weren't you angry at her? She left your father alone.
"No, not at all. My father and mother went on living together all those years. Moreover, we all went on vacations together: My wife, me, my mother, my father and the lover. It was a lot of fun."
Really?
Really, really. We were one big happy family. We all traveled together, had fun and enjoyed ourselves."
And where did your mother sleep at night?
"She would move from one to the other."
She must have been pretty fit.
"She must have, ha? They had a very open relationship. It's an entirely different approach. It's not my approach, but as long as it worked for them, everything's fine."
Yes I am sure I did now, it was in Harrogate I think.
I really enjoyed that show last night until I fell asleep watching it.
Yes, but considering his contemporary song writers, nowhere near as good as Carol King/Gerry Goffin and of course Felice and Boudleaux Bryant.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lTYe9eDqxe8
And as my fellow Motown enthusiasts will attest, the far more prolific.
Holland, Dozier, Holland.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5k0GDQrK2jo
In a previous documentary I noticed when he was interviewed at one of his homes, he had either a Wurlitzer 1015 or a more modern, "One More Time" jukebox in his living room, I was quite envious!
At least he's got a tremendous voice though , we saw him at the M.E.N. a few years back and his voice was better then than it was 25 years earlier !
While I note the uneasiness of some, I think there are choices to be made in the way he is perceived. Either you see the cabaret side or the songcraft. I enjoy a very wide range of music and can therefore appreciate any qualms. But for me, the songcraft wins every time and, just as with Jimmy Webb, it gives me a lot of pleasure.
What a lovely man he is.
Edit. I'm just at the Solitaire point.
I started this thread as I've always admired his ability though I wouldn't say he was one of my favourites from the 50/60s era but I have got a couple of his records in one of my jukeboxes.
You can change some well written songs from "happy" to "sad" just by altering the tempo.
An example of one, is his "Breaking Up is Hard to Do."
He recorded it again, about twenty years after the up-tempo original, it has a simple chord structure, like many good pop songs..
I like to play this on on my electric piano.
I actually prefer the slow tempo version though its rarely heard on the radio. It shows what a talented musician/singer/songwriter he is. By the way, Ive had a look on his website and theres a great pic of him leaning on his jukebox !